Summer Arts Preview: Visual Art

Moholy-Nagy, Robots, and Lots of Strong at S.B. Museums

Bill Dewey’s “Sacramento Delta Patterns” at <i>Vital Westmont</i>.

The Shape of Things to Come at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art Sunday, July 5-Sunday, September 27

When Hungarian painter László Moholy-Nagy resigned from the Bauhaus in 1928, he also stopped painting. Confronting a world on the brink of madness from his studio in Berlin, he chose for a time to explore the creative options presented to him by new technologies instead and began to work in a wide range of new media simultaneously, from photography and motion pictures to theatrical lighting devices and even molded plastic. But before too long, and despite his concern about its seemingly tenuous hold on relevance, painting called the artist back and became a way for him to think about and to create the shape of things to come.

László Moholy-Nagy’s “Untitled Space Modulator” (1946) at SBMA

More Visual Art

The Ray Strong Project. ➧At various locations, including SBMA, SBMM, SBHM, SBMNH, Sullivan Goss, and City Hall, ongoing.

How I See It (Sensory Touch Exhibit). ➧ At The Arts Fund Gallery, Fri., July 24-Sat., Sept. 5.

Vital Westmont. ➧ At the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art, through Sat., June 20.

Then They Form Us: Xavier Cha, Constant Dullaart, Cecile B. Evans, Devin Kenny, Hayal Pozanti, and Julien Previeux. ➧ At Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Sat., Aug. 8-Sun., Oct. 25.