Mary Jo Bang Examines the Bauhaus World of Lucia Moholy Through the Lens of Prose Poetry

At PBS NewsHour, Elizabeth Flock checks in with Mary Jo Bang, author of new poetry collection A Doll for Throwing, which looks into the world of nearly forgotten Bauhaus artist Lucia Moholy. Moholy was the wife of Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy and as Bang points out in conversation with Flock, "her name had been virtually erased from history, as is often the case when women collaborate with men in earlier era." Let's pick up there: 

Moholy was married to Bauhaus master László Moholy-Nagy, and often collaborated with him. Her work has often been overshadowed by his, and for years was also claimed by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius as his own.

Bang’s poetry puts the focus back squarely on Moholy and other women of the Bauhaus movement, and also draws from her own life to find parallels between those years and the present day.

“The [Bauhaus] school was started in 1919 just after WWI, and closed by Hitler in 1933 at a time of high unemployment and extreme xenophobia, so there was a kind of bitterness about lost opportunities,” Bang said. “As I was doing this project, there were all these glimmers and echoes of what’s going on in this country now.”

The Bauhaus school sought to respond to the social ills of the time by designing buildings that offered some humanity, making artworks of practicality and beauty and respecting the power of machines — efforts that continue in today’s art and design field. 

But Bang said she also found herself thinking about how architecture was not the solution to social problems, “unless you also do something with discrimination and education,” including the discrimination of women.

Listen to Bang read a poem from her collection at NewsHour. Still want more? Hear Bang read and talk about her poem "Two Nudes" for PoetryNow.