Art History

Art History

Bauhaus

25/11/15

Bauhaus: Also known as Staatliches Bauhaus, but more commonly known as Bauhaus, was a, art school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous to the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933.

The Bauhaus was founded by Walter Gropius, a German architect who was regarded, along with Ludwig Mies Der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, ass one of the pioneering masters of Modern Architecture.

The Bauhaus also introduced the foundation course, which has become important in today's education, and highly emphasised colour and geology. Colours and form were subjected to scientific law.
Kandinsky taught that the cirlce, square and triangle, which were primary forms, represent and coney qualities identical to those of primary colour, red, blue and yellow.

Walter Gropius: 1883 - 1969

Gropius was born in Berlin, and got married in 1915 to Alma Mahler. In 1916, they had a child called Manon, who died of polio at the age of 18. 

In 1914, Gropius was drafted and served as a sergeant, and then lieutentant in the first world war. throughout his career, he was awarded the Iron Cross twice, and then became an architect, like much of his family before him.

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Bauhaus building in Dessau

The first Bauhaus was in Weimar, the city where the new constitution was established, which became known as the Weimar Republic, and was a change in the government system. It came into being after the first world war in 1918 to the rise of Nazism in 1933. There was hope to create a modern liberal democracy in a state that had only known of authoritarian monarchy and state power.
During the 1920's, there came a period dubbed 'The Golden Age of Weimar', which was brought along by economic recovery, social renewal and cultural renovation. The great depression in the 1930's brought this all to an end and brought on the era of Nazi totalitarianism. 

The Bauhaus was supported by public funds, and created the modern art student. It created the methods of workshop based art and design, which was the backbone of the Bauhaus, and one of its aims was to destroy the boundaries between the many different sides of art. It was the first time that an emphasis had been put on student individuality.

Because of the depression, students who studied there had to work with what they had at hand, which often meant going to junk yards to find materials. It was a place of freedom, for both students and lecturers, but was frowned upon by the people who lived in Weimar due to the outlandish lifestyles of the people who studied and worked in the Bauhaus. 

Too many women applied to study there, and so they were segregated into different workshops, usually made to do weaving and pottery instead of metal and wood work because they were considered fragile, and it was more of a lady-like thing to do. That being said, however, one of the best creators in the metalwork class was Marianne Brandt.

Marianne Brandt: 1893 - 1983

Brandt began her studies at the Weimar Bauhaus in 1924, after first studying at a private art school in Weimar in 1911, the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst Weimar, amongst other things. Her classes were taught by people such as Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, who was her lecturer for her metalworks class, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinski. She continued her studies to the Bauhaus in Dessau, and continued to study with Moholy-Nagy. 

The lecturers at Bauhaus:

Paul Klee: 1879 - 1940

Klee was a German watercolourist, and etcher, and was one of the most inventive artists of the 20th century. He moved to Weimar in 1921 to teach at the Bauhaus, and moved to Dessau in 1926 to continue his work there.

Paul Klee Senecio
1922

Wassily Kandinski: 1866 - 1944

Kandinski was born in Moscow. He was a painter, wood engraver, lithographer, teacher, and theorist. He moved to Munich to study painting and spent two years at the Azbe School after studying Law and declining an offer of a chair at Dorpat University in 1896. His woodcuts were often ispired by Russian folk and fairy tales, and also painted landscape studies directly from nature. 

He developed a Fauve-like contrast of colours and then began to eliminate the representational element from his paintings and compose with abstract colours and shapes. He was appointed a professor at the Weimar Bauhaus in 1922, and moved with the Bauhaus to Dessau in 1925. He began to work with precise geometrical forms, and after the closure of the Bauhaus in 1933 by the Nazi's, lived ou the rest of his life in Paris. 

Squares with concentric circles
1913

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: 1895 - 1946

Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian based abstract painter, designer, typographer, photographer, film maker, and theorist. He studied law at Budapest University and, after being severely injured in the Austro-Hungarian army, began to paint in 1917. He moved to Berlin in 1920, and began to paint abstract pictures under the influence of Kazimir Malevich and El Lissitzky. He met Gropius in 1923 where he was appointed as a professor at the Bauhaus, and moved with the Bauhaus to Dessau in 1925. He became more involved with experimental photography, including photograms. 

Moholy-Nagy resigned from the Bauhaus in 1928 and returned to Berlin, where he temporarily moved away from painting and began with stage designs, abstract film and typographical works. 

Johannes Itten: 1888 - 1967

Itten was a Swiss painter, writer, designer, teacher and theorist. He trained as an elementary school teacher from 1904 to 1908. He taught using methods developed by the creator of the kindergarten concept, Freidrich Frobel, and was exposed to the idea of psychoanalysis.

From 1919 to 1922, Itten taught at the Bauhaus and developed the innovative 'preliminary course', which was there to teach students about the basics of material characteristics, compositions and colour. 

Itten invited Paul Klee and Georg Muche to join him at the Bauhaus. 

Itten was a follower of the Mazdaznan, a cult which had originated in the United States and was largely derived from Zoroastrianism. 

Zoroastrianism: One of the worlds oldest monotheistic religions, was founded by the prophet Zoroaster in ancient Iran approximately 3500 years ago

Mazdaznan: a movement that emphasized the monothesis of faith in Mazda, the good creator. It incorporated elements of both Hinduism and Christianity. 

Itten's religion created conflict between him and those who had converted to his religion (Muche) and Gropius, who wanted the school to move more towards mass production that expressing student individuality. Eventually, Itten resigned and was replaced by Moholy-Nagy in 1923.

Horizontal Vertical
1915

Georg Muche: 1895 - 1987

Much was a german banter, printmaker, architect, author, and teacher.  From 1916 to 1920, he taught at the Sturm art school, and his exposure to the Expressionist world influenced him to become more unconventional in his work, combining abstractions that combined elements of Cubism with the colour ideals of Der Blaue Reiter and Marc Chagall.
His art career was interrupted by serving in the military for one year in the Western Front during the first world war.
Much was invited to the Wiemar Bauhaus in 1919, where he became the youngest master in form, and was the head of the weaving workshop from 1919 to 1925 and directed the preliminary course from 1921 to 1922. From 1925 to 1927, he headed the weaving workshop in Dessau.

Oskar Schlemmer: 1888 - 1943

Schlemmer was a German painter, sculptor, choreographer, and designer. He was hired as a master of form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop. His most famous work is the 'Triadic Ballet' or the 'Triadiches Ballett', in which actors are transfigured from their normal human form to geometrical shapes. Schlemmer was appointed at the Bauhaus by Walter Gropius to run the mural painting and sculpture department in 1920 before heading the theatre workshop. 

In 1929, Schlemmer resigned from the Bauhaus and moved to the Art Academy in Breslau. 

The Triadic Ballet

Josef Albers: 1888 - 1976

Albers was the first student to beome a lecturer at the Bauhaus in 1922 to 1933. He first taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar, and then the Bauhaus in Dessau, and taught typography, furniture design, and basic design. After the closure of the Bauhaus, he moved to USA. He was said to drag madness out of his students, and help them think clearly.

The Bauhaus trained artists to not think as artists, but as engineers. 

The Bauhaus Exhibition: 1923

It was demanded by the government that something was coming out of the tax payers money, and so an exhibition was created, which showed the transition from the early and rather Expressionistic Bauhaus, to the later Constructive Bauhaus. The most important feature was the Haus Am Horn, which was on a hill in Weimar on a sheet called Am Horn.

Haus Am Horn:

The Haus Am Horn was an experimental residential house built in 1923 as part of the first Bauhaus exhibition. It was designed by George Muche and was constructed by Walter Gropius under Adolph Meyer, a psychiatrist and architect. The furniture was designed by Marcel Breuer, and the light by Moholy-Nagy. All of the interior was fabricated within the Bauhaus workshops.

It was a prototype of an idea that those at the Bauhaus believed was residential housing. It was economically sound and was cheap to make. 

It was deigned with a kitchen that was a laboratory for cooking and It was part of the unit of the house. Within the kitchen, it had the storage and layout to produce a sufficient center to the house.

When the Hyperinflation hit in 1923, there was a huge backlash to the Art industry. The future of the Bauhaus looked very bleak because, while it had never been popular within the city, it was becoming increasingly labeled communist, and was eventually closed down in 1924 by the National Socialist Party, or the Nazi's, who deemed it communist. 

The Nazi party started protests against communism.

Because of the hyperinflation, more money was getting printed to compensate for the devaluation of it, some was even printed at the Bauhaus. The Haus Am Horn remained the only one of it's kind.

Hyperinflation: In economics, Hyperinflation occurs when a country experiences very high and usually accelerating rates of inflation, rapidly eroding the real value of the local currency, and causing the population to minimize their holdings of the local money.

Politics during this time, was very left wing. some of them were communists, however the Weimar citizens spat on the pavement because the communists were the enemy. Nazi's were marching through the streets protesting against communism. Artistic matters were used as a political football, and when the National Socialist Party grew stronger, the Bauhaus lost it's support. 

The Bauhaus was declared publicly closed in 1924, before it could be closed down by the Nazis.

In 1925, the Bauhaus reopened in Dessau, an industrial city to the North, which was richer due to it's chemical and engineering works, and politically more liberal than Weimar. 

The Bauhaus workshops were now designing for industrial manufacturing and mass production, so Dessau seemed like it's natural home.

There was money for a new school building, which Gropius designed, and due to advanced construction techniques, it took no longer than a year to build, and was primarily made out of glass, steel and concrete. Everything was under one roof. 

The Bauhaus was one of the first buildings in Europe that expressed a desire for simplicity and directness, which affected architecture everywhere at the time. It was a perfect example o constructivism. It seemed severe and clinical, and less like an art school and more like a laboratory. The workshops int he Bauhaus created all of the furniture and fittings for the new building. Furniture began to follow the principals of engineering, not aesthetics, and took inspiration from such things as cars, planes and bicycles, not ornate furniture.

'The Wassily Chair'
Designed for Wassily Kandinsky, was the icon of the age.

Photography was exploited as not just an artform, but as a form of visual communication. Experiments were made with photomontage, double exposure and over-printing. 

Typography and Graphics design made commanding statements, and were bold, simple, and deviod of any kind of decoration. 

Typefaces and layouts were rethought, in terms of optics and communication theory. Even advertising and display were changed as well. The face of the 20th century was designed, manuactured and staged at the Dessau Bauhaus. 

Even in Dessau, people didn't like the outlandish lifestyle of the Bauhaus students, especially the female students who chose to wear trousers. 

The biggest change at the Bauhaus was the introduction of the Architecture department, in which students collaborated on the design and planning of an estate of workers houses in a Dessau suburb. The estate intended to deal with the housing shortage, that were cheap to build, buy and easy to run. They were flat roofed Utalitarian buildings. 

Head of the Architecture department, Hannes Mayer, believed that building was not an art, but a science, and soon became the second director of the Bauhaus. Gropius stepped back because he thought that his involvement with the Bauhaus would harm it. Meyer hadn't told Gropius of his strong communist political views. 

Meyer was the director for 2 years, in which he moved the school to left wing politics. This was because, in 1929, as a result of the world economic crisis, Germany became sharply polarized politically, which contributed to the rise of both the Nazi movement and the growth of Communism, which was also active at the Bauhaus. Meyer was removed from directorship because of this in 1930.

Ludwig Mies der Van Rohe was appointed in Meyers place. Ludwig Mies der Van Rohe was a Catholic theoretician. He was a quiet man, who, when arriving at the Bauhaus, was horrified by the functionist attitude, because he believed in art.

Mies Der Van Rohe wanted to bring back art as the foundation to the Bauhaus. While he was in directorship, Architectual studies dominated the Bauhaus, and all political activity was banned. 

The Nazi's took over the city council in Dessau, as they had in Weimar, and closed the Bauhaus. 

The Nazi's referred to the Bauhaus as Cultural Bolsheviks.

Bolshevick: A member of a wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party, which led by Lenin, seized control of the government in Russia (October 1917) and became the dominant political power.

Anything that was Bolshevik was Communist, and therefore evil in the eyes of the Nazi's.

Due to the furniture made and the connections developed between art and technology at the Bauhaus, It was dubbed as going on the wrong path.

The Nazi's were attatched to something they called 'Blood and Soil', which meant rustic furniture. 

Hitler had furniture made that had resemblance to Steam Liners, and demanded the people should use that type of wooden furniture, too, as he wanted to return to rustic simplicity. Those at the Bauhaus were hated because they were doing something different.

Although the ideals had changed Bauhaus made furniture remained on sale throughout the 1930's next to other things, such as Nazi memorabilia stores. 

It wasn't the objects that caused the problem, but the people; the teachers and the students, that got them into trouble.

The last home of the Bauhaus was in Berlin. It was an extremely depressing place to work because it was in a factory. All of the Idealism went, and so the masters of the Bauhaus decided to close it for good.

on the 11th of April in 1933, Police arrived at the Bauhaus with trucks, closed the building and took some of the student away.

While The Bauhaus died in Germany, it's students and teachers spread throughout the world taking their ideas and convictions with them, which took their deepest roots in America, particularly, Chicago. Thanks to a lot of the Bauhaus' previous teachers living there, the American city became the proving ground for the industrial world.