{"id":10379,"date":"2019-02-12T19:59:29","date_gmt":"2019-02-13T00:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=10379"},"modified":"2019-02-12T20:07:43","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T01:07:43","slug":"bauhaus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/02\/12\/bauhaus\/","title":{"rendered":"Bauhaus: \u2018The 20th Century\u2019s Most Influential School Of Art, Architecture And Design\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cLet us create a new guild of craftsmen, without the class distinctions which raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist,\u201d Walter Gropius wrote in the 1919 manifesto to launch the State Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany. \u201cTogether let us conceive and create the new building of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will rise one day toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the Bauhaus\u2014German for \u201cbuilding house\u201d or \u201cschool of building\u201d\u2014operated for just 14 years before it was forced to close by the Nazis in 1933, it is considered \u201cthe 20th century\u2019s most influential school of art, architecture and design,\u201d according to the organizers of \u201cThe Bauhaus and Harvard,\u201d<\/a> on view at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge from Feb. 8 to July 28, 2019.<\/p>\n

\"At<\/a>
At Harvard Art Museums: Lucia Moholy (photograph) and Walter Gropius (architecture), “Bauhaus Building, Dessau,” 1926. Gelatin silver print. (Harvard Art Museums\/Busch-Reisinger Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s one of the many shows around the world marking the centenary of the school\u2019s founding. There\u2019s also \u201cRadical Geometries: Bauhaus Prints, 1919-33,\u201d<\/a> at Boston\u2019s Museum of Fine Arts from Feb. 9 to June 23, 2019, featuring 60 prints, drawings, photographs, and postcards. And \u201cArresting Fragments: Object Photography at the Bauhaus,\u201d<\/a> coming to Cambridge\u2019s MIT Museum from March 28 to Sept. 1, 2019, explores Bauhaus photography, graphic design and books.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bauhaus is an answer to the question: how can the artist be trained to take his place in the machine age,\u201d according to the catalogue for the Museum of Modern Art in New York\u2019s 1938 exhibition \u201cBauhaus 1919-1928,\u201d<\/a> which was edited by former Bauhaus staff Herbert Bayer, Ise Gropius and Walter Gropius.<\/p>\n

\"At<\/a>
At Harvard Art Museums: Josef Albers, “Overlapping,” c. 1927 (left) and Marcel Breuer, “B3 club chair,” c. 1931. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Bauhaus, the catalogue said, \u201ccourageously accepted the machine as an instrument worthy of the artist.\u201d It \u201cfaced the problem of good design for mass production,\u201d \u201cIt bridged the gap between the artist and the industrial system,\u201d and \u201cIt broke down the hierarchy which had divided the \u2018fine\u2019 from the \u2018applied\u2019 arts.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was an incubator of modernity\u2014in how it taught and in the art and design its students and staff produced: mechanical, minimalist, flat, graphic, geometric, \u201crational,\u201d black, white and gray.<\/p>\n

\"At<\/a>
At Museum of Fine Arts: Paul Klee, “Tightrope Walker,” 1920, lithograph. (Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Harvard exhibition features nearly 200 objects by more than 70 artists. The school\u2019s international stars are here\u2014Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Moholy-Nagy, Gunta St\u00f6lzl, Lucia Moholy, Oskar Schlemmer, Herbert Bayer. \u201cWith this exhibition,\u201d curator Laura Muir notes, \u201cwe really wanted to get to some of the other artists, especially some of the women artists who were so successful, but were overlooked historically.\u201d The school she notes, \u201cwas open to women students, which a lot of art schools at the time were not open to women.\u201d (Though, women were funneled into the weaving workshop over other programs, and \u201cMen were kind of discouraged from joining the weaving workshop,\u201d Muir says.)<\/p>\n

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If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"At<\/a>
At Harvard Art Museums: Lionel Feininger, “Program of the State Bauhaus in Weimar,” 1919, woodcut with letterpress printed in black ink on green wove paper. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Architect Walter Gropius formed the Bauhaus in 1919 by merging the schools of fine and applied arts in Weimar. He aimed to unite architects, artists and artisans in a modern, utopian version of a medieval craft guild. \u201cTraining began with an experimental foundation course on basic design principles,\u201d the MFA exhibit explains, \u201cfollowed by practical experience in workshops for a range of media: wood, metal, ceramics, glass, and textiles, as well as stage design, wall painting, and photography. The graphic arts\u2014printmaking, book design, and typography\u2014held an equally important position in the curriculum.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Harvard exhibition features student exercises in values and color and their interactions as well as Hannes Beckmann\u2019s 1950 recreation of an assignment (destroyed in World War II) that he made for Josef Albers\u2019s preliminary course: create a freestanding sculpture using a single sheet of brass and a pair of sheers.<\/p>\n

In 1922, Gropius announced that the school would shift its focus from the \u201creturn to the crafts\u201d to \u201ccontact with industry and the practical work of the world.\u201d The first major Bauhaus exhibition, held in Weimar in summer 1923, proclaimed the theme of \u201cArt and Technology: A New Unity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"At<\/a>
At Harvard Art Museums: Lucia Moholy, “Bauhaus Masters Housing, Dessau (Lucia Moholy and L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Moholy-Nagy’s living room),” 1927\u201328. Gelatin silver print with opaque watercolor retouching. (Harvard Art Museums\/Busch-Reisinger Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From early on, the Bauhaus\u2019s striking modernity rubbed some the wrong way\u2014and prompted charges of subversion and communism. In 1925, Weimar\u2019s city council cut off funding to the Bauhaus. So school leaders decided to relocate the school to the German industrial city of Dessau that spring, at the invitation of the mayor and community leaders there. The school built a new campus in Dessau following Gropius\u2019s designs\u2014as well as low-cost Bauhaus-designed housing for factory workers. The structures\u2014and Lucia Moholy\u2019s photos of them\u2014offered a model of how the Bauhaus envisioned modern living: spare, boxy, geometric, unadorned, industrial. \u201cThey weren\u2019t just providing nice housing for grad students,\u201d Muir says. \u201cThey were really used as promotional materials for the Bauhaus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"At<\/a>
At Harvard Art Museums: Herbert Bayer, “Design for a Multimedia Trade Fair Booth,” 1924. Opaque watercolor, charcoal, and touches of graphite with collage of cut printed and colored papers on off-white wove paper. (Harvard Art Museums\/Busch-Reisinger Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the Society of Decorative Artists exhibition in Paris in 1930, Muir says, for the first time since the First World War, the French invited Germans\u2014represented by the Bauhaus\u2014to show. The Germans felt they couldn\u2019t compete with the France\u2019s luxury handmade objects, but with their manufactured goods, they aimed to say, \u201cWe were devastated economically, but we recommitted to creating mass design for everyone,\u201d Harvard curator Melissa Venator says. \u201cIt was full of symbolic and diplomatic import.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time of the Paris exhibition, the Bauhaus was already beginning to fracture. Gropius stepped down as director in 1928, succeeded by architect Hannes Meyer. He left in 1930 under pressure from a right-wing Dessau government and was replaced by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. When Dessau\u2019s city council cut off funding for the Bauhaus in 1932, van der Rohe moved it to Berlin. The following year, the Nazis accused the Bauhaus of anti-government activity and forced the school to close for three months. The Harvard exhibition reports, \u201cOn July 20, the faculty vote unanimously to dissolve the Bauhaus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"At<\/a>
At Harvard Art Museums: Explorations of geometric forms and material studies by students of Robert D. Feild at Newcomb College at Tulane University, 1946\u201349. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Harvard exhibition explores the aftermath. Josef and Anni Albers moved to North Carolina to teach at Black Mountain College in 1933. (Josef later taught at Yale.) In 1937, Gropius joined Harvard\u2019s Graduate School of Design and Moholy-Nagy established the New Bauhaus in Chicago. Mies van der Rohe taught at Illinois Institute of Technology and designed its Chicago campus. Breuer also landed at Harvard. They brought Bauhaus pedagogy with them\u2014a focus on modernism, on machines and mass production, a focus on the integration of the arts and on the fundamentals of design. \u201cArt schools were forever transformed by the Bauhaus,\u201d Muir says.<\/p>\n

Lynette Roth, head of the Harvard Art Museums\u2019 modern and contemporary art division, describes Harvard\u2019s Bauhaus holdings as the \u201clargest collection of Bauhaus outside of Europe.\u201d Gropius began working with Harvard\u2019s Germanic Museum (later the Busch-Reisinger) to assemble a Bauhaus collection at Harvard<\/a> in 1948, drawing on his network of friends and colleagues. Muir says, \u201cI think it really answered a need for these artists. They wanted to preserve the legacy of this school and find a safe place for these materials.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Hans<\/a>
Hans Arp \u201cConstellations II\u201d relief, redwood panels with red paint, as displayed in Harkness Commons Dining Room, Harvard University, c. 1950. (Photo: D. H. Wright)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gropius was also commissioned in 1948 to design Harvard\u2019s Graduate Center (now the Law School\u2019s Caspersen Center) via his Cambridge firm The Architects Collaborative. \u201cIt was the first modernist building on the Harvard campus,\u201d Muir says. The grad student dorms and student center included murals by Joan Miro and Herbert Bayer, a redwood wall sculpture for a dining hall by Hans Arp (now installed in the Harvard exhibition), and plaid bedspreads designed by Anni Albers. \u201cShe designs something that is exquisite and beautiful, but also very functional,\u201d Muir says. The overall project \u201cwas really the realization of a lot of Bauhaus ideas in terms of incorporating modern art, modern architecture and design.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Gropius<\/a>
Gropius House front exterior, Lincoln, Massachusetts, 2009. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you really want a sense of what Bauhaus living meant, visit the Gropius House<\/a> in Lincoln, Massachusetts, which Gropius designed as his family home in 1938 and is now a National Historic Landmark operated by Historic New England. Bauhaus furnishings often seem cool and uncomfortable. But inside Gropius\u2019s boxy, flat-roofed building, the geometric furnishings are swaddled in soft, cozy furs, weavings, rugs. And there are smart little touches, like the radiator in\u00a0the upstairs bathroom arranged so that it warmed towels.<\/p>\n

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If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"Gropius<\/a>
Gropius House living room, Lincoln, Massachusetts, 2009. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At Harvard Art Museums: L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Moholy-Nagy, “A 18,” 1927. Oil on canvas. (Harvard Art Museums\/Busch-Reisinger Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At Harvard Art Museums: Gunta St\u00f6lzl, “Tapestry,” 1922\u201323, cotton, wool, and linen fibers. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At Harvard Art Museums: Gunta St\u00f6lzl, “Tapestry,” 1922\u201323, cotton, wool, and linen fibers. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At Harvard Art Museums: Ad\u00e8le Jackson Kaars-Sypesteyn, “Student exercise from Newcomb College,” 1946\u201349. Wood, string, tape, paper, and paint. (Harvard Art Museums\/Busch-Reisinger Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At Harvard Art Museums: Marianne Brandt, “Untitled (with Anna May Wong),” 1929. Collage. (Harvard Art Museums\/Busch-Reisinger Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At Harvard Art Museums: Herbert Bayer, “Verdure,” 1950. Oil on canvas. (Harvard Art Museums\/Busch-Reisinger Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At Museum of Fine Arts: L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Moholy\u2010Nagy. “Untitled,” from the portfolio “Constructions,” 1923, Lithograph. (Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At Museum of Fine Arts: L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Moholy\u2010Nagy. “Segments of Circle with Cross,” about 1923, linocut or woodcut. (Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At Museum of Fine Arts: Josef Albers, “Astatic,” 1944, woodcut. (Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At Museum of Fine Arts: Lyonel Meininger, “Church at Gelmeroda,” 1918, woodcut. (Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At Museum of Fine Arts: Wassily Kandinsky, “Kleine Welten IV,” 1922, lithograph. (Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At Museum of Fine Arts: L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Moholy-Nagy, “Untitled,” 1939, photogram. (Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At MIT Museum: Etel Mittag-Fodor, “Ball and Bowl,” 1928. (Courtesy Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At MIT Museum: Werner David Feist, “Alarm Clock, Double Exposure,” about 1929. (Courtesy Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At Harvard Art Museums: Wilhelm Wagenfeld and Carl Jakob Jucker, “Table lamp,” 1924, Transparent glass, opaline glass, mercury-silvered, German silver, and mercury-silvered brass. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At Harvard Art Museums: L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Moholy-Nagy, “Light Prop for an Electric Stage,” (foreground left) 1930, aluminum, steel, nickel-plated brass, other metals, plastic, wood, and electric motor. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At Harvard Art Museums: Anni Albers, “Wall hanging,” (at right) 1926, silk two-ply weave. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At Harvard Art Museums: Anni Albers bedspread in Harvard Graduate Center, Cambridge (Dormitory room), after 1949.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"At<\/a>
At Harvard Art Museums: Anni Albers, “Bedspreads for the Harvard Graduate Center,” 1950, plain weave plaid in cotton. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Gropius<\/a>
Gropius House front exterior, Lincoln, Massachusetts, 2009. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cLet us create a new guild of craftsmen, without the class distinctions which raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist,\u201d Walter Gropius wrote in the 1919 manifesto to launch the State Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany. \u201cTogether let us conceive and create the new building of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10392,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[37,42,68,218,216],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10379"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10394,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10379\/revisions\/10394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}