Getty Museum
Joseph und die familie Potiphar
Creator
László Moholy-NagyAmerican Photographer · 1895–1946
All works by this person →> The reality of our century is technology: the invention, construction and maintenance of machines. To be a user of machines is to be of the spirit of this century. Machines have replaced the transcendental spiritualism of past eras. > > --László Moholy-Nagy > > Perhaps more than any other artist in the Getty Museum collection, László Moholy-Nagy would have delighted in the presentation of his im
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 1926
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
> The title of this piece refers to the Old Testament story of Joseph, who, after being sold by his brothers into slavery, rose to the rank of overseer in the house of Potiphar, the captain of the pharaoh’s guard (Genesis 39). After Joseph spurned the advances of Potiphar’s wife, she accused him of trying to seduce her, causing him to be jailed. > > The most arresting figure in this composition, an emaciated young man supporting his weight on a crutch, seems unmoved by the advances of the languid coquette across from him who presses her body against a translucent three-dimensional form (a form that recurs frequently in László Moholy-Nagy’s work). In the background, another man turns his back on the couple and averts his gaze from the two pairs of bare legs before him. The lines drawn on either side of him (tightropes, suggests the American art historian Julie Saul) indicate that there is no escape from the situation. > > Katherine Ware, *László Moholy-Nagy*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995), 52. © 1995 The J. Paul Getty Museum.
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