Introduction to Modern Art 8/3/04 – Bauhaus
Modern Art
Bauhaus
Slide List 8-3- 2004
Interview with former Bauhaus student
Slide 1: Lucia Moholy-Nagy, Views of New Bauhaus Buildings, 1925
Slide 2: Lucia Moholy-Nagy, New Bauhaus Building, 1926
Slide 3: Kirchner, Bathers at Moritzburgm
Slide 4: Peter Behrens, trade mark for the AEG company c.1908 and electric fun, 1908
Slide 5: William Morris, Settee from the Sussex Range, 1865
Slide 6: Walter Gropius as cavalry officer during the First World War
Slide 7: Walter Gropius – Above – Diesel railway locomotive, 1912 — below – Compartment in a Mitropa Sleeping Car, c.1914
Slide 8: Walter Gropius & Adolph Meyer – Above – Fagus Factory at Aifred-an-der-Leine, 1910-11 Below – Office Building at the Cologne Werkbund exhibition, 1914
Slide 9: Bauhaus – The Cabinet-making workshop at the Weimar Bauhaus
Slide 10: Bauhaus — The Weaving workshop at the Weimar Bauhaus(image not found)
Slide 11: Bayer Irene — Members of the theatre group in Treppenwitz costumes, 1927(image not found)
Slide 12: Bauhaus — Plan of the first training programme in Weimar, n.d.
Slide 13: Batz Eugene – Material Studies using various exposure and development times, 1929(image not found)
Slide 14: Braun Albert – Hoop Dance 2 views, 1928-9
Schlemmer’s work on this project became the basis for his fundamental-systematizing dances the Form, Gesture, Space, Stick, Scenery, and Hoop dances which he taught at the Bauhaus while in charge of its theater workshop from 1923 to 1929.
Slide 15: Braun Albert – Glass Dance, 1929(image not found)
Slide 16: Outerbridge Paul – The Triumph of the Egg, 1932
Slide 17: Peterhans Walter – Still Life with slice of lemon, tulle and feathers, 1929
Slide 18: Feininger T, Form Dance, 1928(image not found)
Slide 19: Marianne Brandt – Me, 1927
Slide 20: Muche Georg – Reflection: Weaving workshop in sphere, 1921
Slide 21: Feininger T – The Weaving Class behind a loom, 1928(image not found)
Slide 22: Johannes Itten – In robe he designed himself, nd
Slide 23: Kandinsky, 1925, Swinging
Slide 24: Eugen Batz – Ordering of colours and forms from Kandinsky’s seminar, 1929-30.
Slide 25: Fritz Tschaschnig – Ordering of colours and forms from Kandinsky’s seminar, 1931(image not found)
Slide 26: Fritz Tschaschnig – Ordering of colours and forms from Kandinsky’s seminar, 1931(image not found)
Slide 27: Lucia Moholy-Nagy – Portrait of L'szl' Moholy-Nagy, 1926
Slide 28: L'szl' Moholy-Nagy – Funkturm (radio tower) Berlin, 1926
Slide 29: L'szl' Moholy-Nagy – Design for title page 14, Bauhaus Bucher, 1929
Slide 30: Anon – Photocourse – Bauhaus – Dessau, c.1930
Slide 31: Bayer Herbert – Lonely metropolitan, 1932
Slide 32: Bayer Herbert – Self-Portrait, 1937
Slide 33: Kurt Kranz – Portraits and the Bauhaus, 1930
Slide 34: Muche – Haus am Horn, exterior, 1923
Slide 35: Marcel Breuer – Dressing Table with movable mirrors, 1923
Slide 36: Marcel Breuer – Kitchen, 1923
Slide 37: Walter Gropius, Monument to the March Dead in the main cemetery of Weimar, 1921
Slide 38: Dessau Bauhaus – Above – Exterior View Below — Student’s apartment
Slide 39: Dessau Bauhaus – Above – The Vestibule – Below – Lecture theatre (Seats designed by Breuer and light fittings by Moholy-Nagy)
Slide 40: Gropius – Director’s House, Dessau, 1926
Slide 41: Lucia Moholy – Table Lamp
Slide 42: Marcel Breuer – Tubular Chair – ‘Wassily’ Chair, 1925
Slide 43: Ruth Hollos-Consemuller – gobelin, c. 1926
Slide 44: Gunta Stolzl, gobelin, 1926-7
Slide 45: L'szl' Moholy-Nagy – Title Page, Qualitat, 1931
Slide 46: Bauhaus – Title pages for Bauhaus Magazine, 1928
Slide 47: Bauhaus – Title pages for Bauhaus Magazine, 1929
[ text:
Bauhaus 1919-1333
Three periods
1. Weimar
2. Dessau
3. Berlin
Direct artists into a new machine age by marrying art and industry. The process started in 1897 with Art & Craft workshops in Germany and ended in 1933. Bauhaus is not unique. Its principal aim was to bring together ideas from of art and industry.
The main idea was to improve manufacturing in order to improve the quality of life in Germany and create products for export. They had to have a German identity.
We will cover:
1. The foundation
2. The people
3. The work produced.
Kirchner’s Bathers at Moritzburgm – Expressionism and Jugendstil, he tried to create a unique German art. In Germany artists were all aware of the importance of design and were all trained in Arts & Crafts. This meant no life classes and no copying old masters.
Peter Behrens AEG logo and unique AEG fan.
William Morris felt the machine alienated the worker so he wanted all his goods to be handmade but this was utopian as they were so expensive only the upper classes could buy his work and this was in conflict with his desire to create beautiful goods for everybody.
The German approach was very different as the German Government held been involved in Arts & Crafts since unification (1866 and 1870-71). They wanted to put money into the project and make it successful so it became better known than in England. Their ideas were therefore applied to industry rather than being utopian.
The Bauhaus was a coalition of existing authorities in Weimar. They asked Walter Gropius to head the new art academy – the old Fine Arts School and the Arts & Crafts school. They would learn both skills and work with industry and create products that could be mass produced supported by the Government.
They looked at Morris ‘s medieval – inspired designs but applied it to mass culture. The New Weimar republic post – war brought a new idealism. Gropius ‘s experience during the war caused him to employ painters with utopian leanings.
Gropius was an established architect – he had designed a locomotive, factory and office building. He married craftsmanship with modem materials. He had a utopian idea that architecture could bring together all the arts. He thought Bauhaus would contribute to post – war society.
He introduced a guild system – lecturers were called masters, first year students apprentices and second year journeyman. A medieval craft guild system. The school was divided into workshops – metal, wood, stained glass, colour, textiles, stone and clay. There was also a theatre workshop. Wagnerian ideal of the totalkunstwerk of uniting all the arts. Futurists and the Expressionists also had this idea of uniting all the arts.
Each workshop had a master of form and a workshop master (creativity and the practiced application).
The ultimate of the programme was building. Students were encouraged to experiment with different materials.
Initially students were trained for three years. A small number of students could extend their training to become masters. There was supposed to be no hierarchy. The course outline used a circular scheme. It was unlike traditional art training
A large number of female students were accepted unlike traditional art colleges. Elsewhere females were not accepted into life classes until the late 19.
Areas they felt suited the female nature – intuitive, weaving, looms were brought into the colleges.
Johannes ltten (Eaten) was one of the first masters of form. He wanted to free the hidden talents of the student rather than impose ideas. He was interested in Eastern religions — he introduced breathing exercises before class and dance. He got students to students reduce old masters to blocks of colour. He was Utopian and mystical. There was a clash between utopianism and the manufacture of goods. So he resigned in 1923 after an argument with Gropius.
Kandinsky and Klee were also interested in mysticism and utopian ideas.
The book Point and Line to Plane by Kandinsky explained the spiritual association of form and colour. So blue was a circle, red a square and yellow a triangle. Intermediate forms had intermediate colours.
Angles were deemed to have a certain temperature 90 degrees was red, smaller angles yellow, larger cooler.
He wrote a colour theory that also linked colour to sound.
Moholy-Nagy was appointed as a much more practical director as Gropius had sold very little in the first three years. Moholy-Nagy replaced Itten. He was influenced by the Constructivists in Russia and wanted to link art and industry.
His medium was photography (see famous photograph looking down from a radio tower).
Moholy-Nagy was much more practical and he introduced distinct design ideas and typography (very distinct and became a symbol of the Bauhaus). He introduced a photographic course from 1923. He produced some very significant works (see photomontage of eyes in palms of hands before a city, alienation. Also see Kranz ‘s superimposition of portrait and Bauhaus).
In 1923 he opened an exhibition that included a model house Hans am Horn. This was very significant as it was designed for the modern middle – class. The purpose was to make life easy for the inhabitants. The living room was an open space for the whole family. The kitchen was the first fitted kitchen worldwide. The children ‘s room had blackboards on the walls and toy boxes that became tables and chairs. These were all firsts and common today. The fitted kitchen, cupboards and so on were all designed to be easily mass produced. The house did away with ornamentation, it was a minimalist house.
Political events in Weimar 1919-1925 were significant and ran parallel with the Bauhaus. There was a very strong local resistance to having the school there. An extreme right wing local government accused Bauhaus of left wing and revolutionary tendencies. The life of the Bauhaus students was Bohemian and threatening to the locals. Gropius was accused of favouring Jewish students.
Gropius designed a memorial to the dead leftwing strikers of 1921. In 1923 his house was searched. In 1924 all funding was withdrawn. The school was moved to Dessau (north east on the way to Berlin, an industrial city).
They all designed the new building. Moholy-Nagy designed the lighting, Gropius the building. It used modern materials and was practical. He also designed the staff accommodation.
The old guild method was abolished and each workshop now had one professor. The school began designing useful goods, such as table lamps, tea infusers, chairs (the famous Wassily (Vaseely]) chair made of steel tubes with two stripes as the seat. They had funding from Dessau but also started generating income from designs. Ruth Hallos carpet design. (gobelin). Also Gunter Stolzl encouraged consumers to put up textile wall hangings. Consumer goods became highly desirable in the late 1920s. Typography workshop was influential. They favoured lower case letters against the German system of capitalizing all nouns. Smooth, clean, clinical typography. It was very provocative to challenge the German language itself. Moholy-Nagy was a very political person who wanted to challenge the state. Bauhaus follows the rise of the Nazi party. When the Nazi’s took control of Dessau in 1924 they moved to Berlin but lasted only one year when in 1925 Hitler took control of the country. It was immediately closed as it was accused of harbouring Jews and left-wingers. Most staff and students went to the US and founded a school in Chicago. Compare with Constructivists as they had similar ideas. The majority of the artists had been to Russia in the early 1920’s. It is important to note the similarities.