ABSTRACT
Moholy’s future was uncertain before he was invited in 1937 by a group of industrialists who wanted to reestablish the Bauhaus as a new design school in Chicago. Until then, he would spend more than two years in London beginning in May of 1935, working primarily as a commercial designer. He would design shop windows for a menswear store, create sets and special effects for films, and put together advertisements for airlines and transit authorities. At the same time, he would further his own experiments in avant-garde photography and film. The commercial projects that Moholy would pursue in London were not just diversions for him, nor were they merely the means of making a living— though they were certainly that. The commercial contracts were also avenues through which he could realize his optimistic perspective about the potentially fruitful alliance of arts and industry toward the end of social progress. Indeed, as the historian Terence Senter has noted, Moholy took these commissions with “relish” and was a “shrewd commercial operator.” It was the Bauhaus ideal, privately pursued, preserved in spirit in London before being relaunched by Mo-holy in America.
