'Gyorgy Kepes: Undreaming the Bauhaus'
John R. Blakinger, MIT Press, 504 pages, $55. John R. Blakinger's study of the life and ideas of Gyorgy Kepes (1906-2001) is a cautionary tale of one artist's struggle for relevance in an age of science. Trained as a painter in his native Hungary, Kepes moved in an artistic society permeated by the revolutionary atmosphere of post-World War I Europe. In 1946, Kepes began teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he would remain until his retirement. It is emblematic of Kepes' aspirations that the program he established at MIT was not called the Department of Art and Design. It bore a scientific-sounding name: the Center for Advanced Visual Studies. The teaching of art there was not about imparting techniques for manipulating traditional media. He tried to organize interdisciplinary seminars where scientists and visual artists would learn from each other. Kepes also curated exhibitions of cutting-edge technology that were not always favorites of critics even if loved by the public. MIT was at the intersection of academia and the military-industrial complex during the 1960s, with Kepes caught in the middle. In trying to placate all sides in a dispute over an international exhibit, students and colleagues dismissed him as hopelessly naive. Blakinger's attitude toward his subject is ambivalent. At one moment, he seems to regard Kepes as a romantic revolutionary, attempting to bring modern art to the masses. At others, he portrays Kepes as an academic apparatchik fruitlessly trying to hobnob with his (scientific) betters.
WASHINGTON POST
