Lazlo Moholy-Nagy

The creative human being knows (and suffers from it) that the inherent values of life are being destroyed under the pressure of moneymaking, competition, and trade. He suffers from the materialistic evaluation of his vitality, form the flattening out of his instincts, from the impairing of his biological balance.

And yet though the present social structure is a thoroughly unsuitable medium for the balanced outlet of human capacities, in the private life of individuals some glimpses of a functional understanding have already appeared.

The advances in art, literature, the theater and the moving-picture in out time, and various educational movements give important indications of this fact. So does the interest in physical culture, in recreation and leisure, and in treatment by ‘natural’ rather than chemical methods.

Everyone is talented

Such efforts, taken as a whole, portend a new world. But no small unit of this growth should be studied as an isolated fact. The relations of various subjects (science, art economics, technical knowledge, educational methods) and their integration must be constantly clarified within the social whole.

Not the product, but man, is the end in view. Proceeding from such a basic readjustment we may work out an individual plan of life, with self-analysis as its background. Not the occupation, not the goods to be manufactured, ought to be put in the foreground, but rather recognition of man’s organic function. With this functional preparation, he can then pass on the action, to a life evolved from within. We then lay down the basis for an organic system of production whose focal point is man, not profit.

Everyone is talented. If he is deeply interested in his work, every healthy man has a deep capacity for developing the creative energies in his nature.

Everyone is equipped by nature to receive and to assimilate sensory experiences. Everyone is sensitive to tones and colours, everyone has a sure ‘touch’ and space reactions, and so on. This means that everyone by nature is able to participate in all the pleasures of sensory experience, that any healthy man can become a musician, painter, sculptor, or architect, just as when he speaks, he is ‘a speaker’. That is, he can give form to his reactions in any material (which is not, however, synonymous with ‘art’, which is the highest level of expression of a period). The truth of his statement is evidenced by actual life; in a perilous situation or in moments of inspiration the conventions and inhibitions of daily routine are broken, and the individual often reaches an unexpected plane of achievement.

The work of children and of primitive peoples offers other evidence. Their spontaneous expressions spring from an inner sense of what is right, as yet unshaken by outside pressure. These are examples of life governed by inner necessities. If we consider that anyone can achieve expression in any field, even if it is not his best outlet, or essential to society, we may infer with still greater certainty that it must be possible for everyone to comprehend works already created in any field.

Such receptivity develops by stages, according to disposition, education, mental and emotional understanding. If the broad line of organically functioning life is once established, the direction of all human production is clearly indicated. Then no work - as is often the case today with industrial production and its endless subdivisions - could be felt as the despairing gesture of a man being submerged. All would emerge as an expression of organic forces.