The Bauhaus

Modern art and the city: Bauhaus

Oliver Shawen
Dora Sommer
Mike Makar

Masters of Modernism

Walter Gropius

Architect and Founder/Director of the Bauhaus School

Hired as Director of Bauhaus on April 1

Fundamentals of the Bauhaus as told by Gropius:

“In this community of workshops, students and masters would work hand in hand (as did the stonemasons and woodcarvers who built the Gothic Cathedral). Modesty and dedication/Human conduct to be as straight forward as the tubular steel and tough textile fibers…” Gropius saw the school “as a place for designers to collaborate in an ideal setting.” Gropius’ initial purpose for the Bauhaus, “provide the larger world with sensible design in which form followed function.” And to “[eradicate] ornamental and fluff”  Gropius’ intent was to create a visual environment as simple and balanced as his emotional situation was tumultuous.

Paul Klee

“A man of few words and a consistently calm demeanor.” Klee, while on walks through the park, would openly discuss his conversations with snakes… “Worms want to console me…only the smallest creatures are still zealously active, ants, flies, and beetles…” Gropius did not hire Klee to teach at the Bauhaus purely for his talent (like he did with the other ‘masters’). The director figured that Klee’s presence on the faculty would help the school forge connections with the international art world.

Hans Fischli (student) on Klee’s approach to teaching, “Klee taught us neither how to draw nor how to use colour, but what lines and points were.” Klee’s recommendation for what to be written on his tombstone,

“I cannot be grasped in the here and now

For I live just as well with the dead

As with the unborn

Somewhat closer to the heart

Of creation that usual

But far from close enough.”

-Doctors diagnosed Klee with schizophrenia but he was never treated

Wassily Kandinsky

Pioneer of Abstract painting

(Practiced law before moving to Germany to become a full time artist)

Kandinsky used vibrant colors in his paintings with an outcome of liveliness and what is described as “sound effects” Kandinsky’s paintings have been described as possessing the elements of Polenta or Cornmeal, “paintings are like polenta when it is being cooked… growing, bursting, and condensing.”

Josef Albers

1 of the 7 remaining faculty from the original school

Albers is described as coming out of nowhere—invented himself

Daring and decisiveness that marked his personal actions shown in his work and teaching.”

Many people thought, “Albers was invested with god-like power.”

Annelis Else Frieda Fleschman

( later known as/artist name, Anni Albers)

Leading textile artist at the Bauhaus

…one of the most important workshops the Bauhaus had to offer “Made great strides in the Bauhaus weaving workshop, constructive wall hangings and subtle upholstery materials”

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

(Born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies)

Architect

“The best thing Gropius has done was to invent the name Bauhaus,” Mies. Mies became the last Bauhaus school director before SS storm troopers raided. Mies, was described as ‘elitist jail warden,’ due to his efforts to seize control of the school by calling for mandatory in-depth personal interviews/if students were willing to give up all political activities (leftists)… 1931 Brochure, “…They declared explicitly that the Bauhaus is run completely apolitically and purely from an object point of view.” ‘Mies van der Rohes’ was one of his most elegant artistic creations…He labored over every detail and nuance of his building…”

And at a point in time Rohe asked his students to burn the papers showing his pre-modernist past.

Early History of the Bauhaus

Bauhaus emerged in Germany amid the revolutionary turmoil of 1919, during the transition from monarchy to a republic and closed in 1933 under pressure from the National Socialists.  Bauhaus was to be a working community of the collective artistic disciplines and eventually will produce everything related to building: architecture, sculpture, painting, furnishings, and handcrafts. A new kind of learning institute focused on the economic needs/addressing practical, everyday tasks.

Gropius proposed

“…Combining the two Grand-Ducal Saxon Institutions- Academy of Art and the School of Arts and Crafts-making them into a single “entity.”

In the beginning:

Early Phase- combined the late artistic thought of late expressionism with the craft ideal of the Middle Ages.

Later Phase- dominated by the visual concepts of constructivism and a program for design that aimed at practicality as well as functionality with the requirements and potentials of modern technology

Bauhaus Program, 1919;

“To educate architects, painters, and sculptors of all levels…to become competent craftsmen or independent creative artists…to form a working community of leading and future artist-craftsmen.”

Statutes (decree), 1921;

Purpose:

“The training of artistically talented people to become creative designers in the fields of the crafts, industry, and architectures.”

Curriculum, 1925;

1. A thorough craft, technical, and formal training for artistically talented individuals with the aim of collaboration in building.

2. Practical research into problems of house construction and furnishing. Development of standard prototypes for industry and the crafts.”

Johannes Itten introduced elementary instruction or preliminary course, which is obligatory for all entering the Bauhaus, like a rite of initiation. The teachers from the original schools and the new teachers that Gropius had hired began to butt-heads because a class consisted of both a new and an old master, “…An artist and an artisan, or-to use the Bauhaus terminology- a ‘master of form’ and a ‘master of craft’.” It was the differences that made Bauhaus extremely productive and it contributed significantly to the success of the Bauhaus experiment. Or, as Josef Albers put it, “It was the best thing at the Bauhaus, that we were absolutely independent and we didn’t agree on anything…So when Kandinsky said ‘yes,’ I said ‘No’; when he said ‘no,’ I said ‘yes.’ We wanted to expose the students to different view points.”

However:

Shortly after its creation, the Bauhaus divided into two opposing camps:

-Gropius, emphatic about the impact of the schools program on society at large

-Itten and followers, focused on the development of the individual and on creativity regardless of its broader impact (practiced Mazdaism-a way of life in accord with the teaching of Zoroaster, Persian Prophet) …After Itten’s resignation, Gropius felt relieved and victorious (though Gropius was the one who hired him in the first place).

The Bauhaus Design Philosophy

The Bauhaus school of design philosophy revolved around the use of very simple geometric shapes, circles, rectangles, triangles, the use of intersecting vertical and horizontal planes, and the strong use of primary colors. The overuse of ornamentation typical in traditional design was rejected by the designers and faculty of the school in favor of minimalistic design (Architect weekly). 

Why muddle a message with overly ornamental designs? To the designers at Bauhaus, simplicity and minimalism are clearly better when presenting information to the viewer. These very fundamental principles are reflected in nearly every piece and design produced in the schools nearly 15 years of operation. The school focused on applying their design philosophy onto nearly every aspect of design and art through forward thinking, innovative ideas.

Metalworking 

The metalworking workshop at the Bauhaus focused primarily on creating functional easily mass produced, well designed, pieces for the home as well as the workplace.

 The overall focus of the metal workshop was to create functional pieces that could also serve as works of art in their own right, to have some sort of intrinsic value on their own taken out of context to what their function was. As seen in the in the next slide, Bauhaus style of simple geometric forms and intersecting planes, was widely used throughout.

Furniture

Much like the metalworking workshop, the furniture workshop’s main goal was to produce pieces which, in their own right, could be considered works of art, exemplary design as well as being functional, easily mass produced, pieces of furniture.

“…This studio reconceived the very essence of furniture, often seeking to dematerialize conventional forms such as chairs to their minimal existence. Breuer theorized that eventually chairs would become obsolete, replaced by supportive columns or air. 

Inspired by the extruded steel tubes of his bicycle, he experimented with metal furniture, ultimately creating lightweight, mass-producible metal chairs. Some of these chairs were deployed in the theater of the Dessau building.”  (metmuseum.org)  While innovative and completely revolutionary, many of the designs that came out of the furniture workshop was often more focused on form rather than function, and as such were often either too uncomfortable or too abstract to be successful market pieces. “The emphasis, in the case of (Weimar) furniture, can scarcely be said to have been placed on function, but rather on form. In this fusion of art and handy work the pursuit of form for form’s sake is all too evident. The Bauhaus designers conceived the object of use, whether a chair, table, or cabinet as an abstract composition of planes, cubes, rectangular volumes, or a combination of these.” (98) Out of the many pieces produced in the furniture, very few pieces were embraced by the general public. The exception to this was the Breuer steel tube chair, a radical concept at the time, but one that has become an everyday convenience.

 “The greatest single achievement of the Dessau workshop (this was, strictly speaking not of the workshop because it was done out side of the Bauhaus) was Breuer’s invention of the tubular steel chair, but with the exception of some pieces by Breuer, which have lately been revived, no Bauhaus furniture has stood the test of time and continued in production.” (Inside the Bauhaus 104) The radical, forward-thinking work done at the furniture workshop still influences modern design to this day.

The Wassily Chair B 3

            The Wassily Chair first came into development as the Slatted Chair in 1922, by Marcel Breuer. The Slatted Chair was an attempt by Breuer to design a product for industrial production (33). Breuer used wooden slats to build the frame, slats in the cross sections, and a heavy cloth as the actual seat and back support (33). As unique as the chair looked, it was cost heavy and failed to deliver any kind of comfort. The main problem was that the incline of the chair forced people to sit in a position that put pressure on the spine (33). In 1925, when the Bauhaus moved from Weimar to Dessau, Marcel Breuer came up with a new idea for his chair. He was riding his bike and thought that the steel tubing could be used to produce furniture (111). The steel tubing has much different properties from that of wood, and since the new school was still in production, Breuer was forced to find an alternative place to create the chair. The help came from a nearby Junkers aircraft factory (111). One of the metal workers helped Breuer created the first prototype which eventually transformed into the final Wassily Chair B 3 (111). At first the chair stood on four feet and the frame was welded (111). Over time Breuer abandoned the feet and had the frame assembled to together by screws (111). The chair turned out to become a success, but still was way ahead of its time and would not become popular in 1968 when Knoll International had official rights to the chair (111). A lot of chairs today are influenced by Marcel Breuer’s Wassily Chair. You can find patio chairs, simple stools, and ever couches made from the chair’s style. (50 Bauhaus Icons You Should Know)

Pottery
While it is unsurprising that an art school would have a pottery studio the school only had a studio in the because it took over one in the local area and utilized the facilities to further the Bauhaus philosophies of design. “When the Bauhaus moved to Dessau, Gropius decided not to continue the pottery workshop even though it had been extremely successful in making contact with industry.”(Inside the Bauhaus 119)

  “…The Bauhaus had a pottery shop in the first place because the pottery was a traditional craft in the Weimar area…Gropius merely took over the existing pottery in Dornburg…” (Inside the Bauhaus 119) The works produced in the pottery workshop were not innovative in their construction but in their design. By utilizing the Bauhaus formula of simplified clean geometric forms and intersecting planes to produce works of functional art, combined with traditional methods of ceramic construction, the workshop created some of the era’s most innovative pieces of ceramics.

Fine art

Being a design school, the Bauhaus did not offer painting classes in the traditional sense. The Bauhaus was a design school, and as such many of the faculty frowned upon traditional contemporary painting. It did not have painting galleries; however, painting was done at the Bauhaus, just not in the traditional sense. Instead the school opted to put in place what they called the Wall Painting Workshop.

 In this workshop students would create murals consisting of various materials, paint not excluded, for the varying Bauhaus and other exhibitions. Paintings produced by the Bauhaus usually tend to be abstract compositions of shapes and planes with influences of Russian constructivism.

Type Design

The Designers at the Bauhaus wanted first and foremost to innovate type design and bring “…visual validity to the printed page” (inside the Bauhaus 113). The main purpose was to improve the forms of the letters, improve the presentation of language without changing the structure of it, and create a dynamic system of communication that leads the reader across each page with ease. 

“Typography was conceived as both an empirical means of communication and an artistic expression, with visual clarity stressed above all. Concurrently, typography became increasingly connected to corporate identity and advertising. The promotional materials prepared for the Bauhaus at the workshop, with their use of sans serif typefaces and the incorporation of photography as a key graphic element, served as visual symbols of the avant-garde institution.” (metmuseum.org)

Designers at the Bauhaus played with differing strokes, mixing traditional capital letters with lowercase and vice versa, interchanging symbols with letters, eliminating capital letter forms altogether, and even went so far in this aspect of communication as to invent and implement new forms of alphabets. 

An important trend to note in the majority of typefaces created at the Bauhaus was to use of Sans Serif letterforms.  Their innovations and groundbreaking design work was a fundamental shift from the traditional German way of typesetting, which was firmly rooted in the gothic style (Inside the Bauhaus 113).

Printmaking 

“The Bauhaus print shop was not a typical printing shop but, rather, a studio. In it both students and masters made prints from a variety of materials-woodblocks, etching plates, and lithographic stones.” (Inside the Bauhaus 105)

The print shop produced everything from posters and studies done by students to portfolios of the masters at the Bauhaus and current influential artist at the time. (106)

Architecture

All though Bauhaus influenced all kind of art; Walter Gropius stated that the ultimate aim of the Bauhaus was architecture (Rowland 98). In 1919, Gropius founded and became the first director of The School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar and would later officially take the name Bauhaus (Kuhl 63). Gropius is most known for bringing arts and architecture together to form a new conglomerate (Neumann 15).

                  

The Bauhaus style of architecture became a new concept in the Weimar Republic because of its new and unusual concepts at the time. It stressed horizontals, emphasized interlocking flat planes, right angles, white surfaces, glass walls, and flat roofing (Rowland 99). These forms of design were suitable for Germany after World War One because the country faced a major housing crisis. Many people in Germany suffered from the treaty of Versailles at the end of the war. It put the whole nation into poverty and these homes were quick and effective to build. However, some people in the Bauhaus decided that the homes needed to take a more technical and form approach.

In 1928, Walter Gropius steps down as director and Hannes Meyer takes over. Meyer was known to be strongly collectivist, materialist, and very technical (Rowland 101). Students were asked to research and incorporate factors of the amount of sunlight, the social, political, religious, and sexual relationships of the proposed inhabitants (101). Many of the students disliked Meyer’s teachings since many of them could not meet his goals. Meyer was booted out of the Bauhaus in 1930 and Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe assumes the position of director of the Bauhaus.

Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe took control in the last year, but became one of the most respected Bauhaus officials at the time. It took some time to transition to the new director, but many of the students enjoyed learning under Van der Rohe.  He taught three basic principles: Form follows function, Truth to materials, and less is more. Form follows function meant to keep the building simple, clean, and honest (Smock 9). Buildings have one function, nothing more, and nothing less (9). Truth to materials meant to use natural materials, no disguising plastic as metal or wood (9). Less is more meant to strip the building down to the bare essentials (9). The mechanics are allowed to show. Even though the school ended in 1933, many people in America were influenced by the Bauhaus.

Textiles

The work done in the textile workshop was some of the best received of all the Bauhaus works. Because of the combinations of traditional media with Bauhaus design philosophy of using intersecting planes, shapes, and colors, the textiles produced proved to be some of the most pleasing to the eye of the time.

 “The textile workshop produced an extraordinarily large output… Although the high prices deterred some people, the wall-hangings, sofa covers, and tablecloths were very popular with individual customers, and the workshop frequently worked to their specifications. The workshop’s earnings at Weimar were second only to those from ceramics.” (Bauhaus sourcebook 83)

Bibliography

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Kühl, Isabel, Kristina Lowis, and Sabine Thiel-Siling. 50 Architects You Should Know. Munich: Prestel, 2008. Print.

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Neumann, Eckhard. Bauhaus and Bauhaus People. N.p.: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970. Print.

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Stock-Allen, Nancy. Graphic Design History. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2014.

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Anni Albers in her weaving studio at Black Mountain College, 1937. Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. Anni Albers in her weaving studio at Black Mountain College, 1937 . By Helen M. Post. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2014.

Diagram of Curriculum at Bauhaus from Bayer and Gropius' Book "Bauhaus". University of California, San Diego. Web. 8