Student Exercise from a Bauhaus Preliminary Course

Curator: This is a photograph titled "Student Exercise from a Bauhaus Preliminary Course," likely by Lucia Moholy. The Harvard Art Museums holds it. Editor: It looks like a precarious little cityscape built from see-through wafers and a toothpick. Almost melancholic. Curator: The Bauhaus preliminary course emphasized exploring materials and forms. This composition might represent the school’s philosophy—finding beauty in functional design. Editor: Functional, yes, but in an almost dreamlike way. The materials suggest fragility, a temporary nature, while also alluding to a utopian architectural model. Curator: The image itself becomes a document of experimentation. It represents the new visual language promoted by the Bauhaus, and Moholy, of course. Editor: Maybe the melancholy comes from knowing that dreams of pure form often bump against the messy reality of the world. Still, it's lovely and hopeful in its simplicity.