On this day in 1942, Enrico Fermi set off the first successful nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago's Stagg Field.This breakthrough ushered in the nuclear age—which bestowed awesome powers of both generation and destruction.
Heat and Light
On this day in 1942, Enrico Fermi set off the first successful nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago's Stagg Field.This breakthrough ushered in the nuclear age—which bestowed awesome powers of both generation and destruction.
Painter Laszlo Moholy-Nagy believed that artists were "utopians of genius" capable of humanizing industry. In Leuk 5, he portrayed atomic structures with eerie beauty. This autobiographical painting refers to Moholy-Nagy's ambivalence about nuclear science, which led to the development of radiation treatments for his leukemia, but also to the invention of the atomic bomb.
Read more about Moholy-Nagy's "nuclear visions" in an article by Timothy J. Garvey in our fall 2000 issue of American Art .
Source: Modernism & Abstraction: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).
Pictured: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, 1895 Hungary–1946 USA, Leuk 5, 1946, oil and pencil on canvas, 30 1/4 x 38 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost.