BAUHAUS ART
Irem Yilmaz
Contextual
Studies,
Art
& Design Foundation
Kingston
University
Walter
Gropius founded The Bauhaus School in early 1900’s in Weimar. Gropius was an
architect it was an art and design school; but the school did not have an architecture
department during the first years. The students at the school were taught to
primarily design whatever it was that they, it was very much a broad, whether
it be designing for homes, furniture or anything else. “Gropius explained this
vision for a union of art and design in the Proclamation of the Bauhaus (1919),
which described a utopian craft guild combining architecture, sculpture, and
painting into a single creative expression. Gropius developed a craft-based
curriculum that would turn out artisans and designers capable of creating
useful and beautiful objects appropriate to this new system of living.” [1]
The Bauhaus combined elements of both fine arts and design education. “ With
the first Bauhaus program Gropius translated the ideas for reform developed
during the revolutionary and post-revolutionary periods into an educational
curriculum. But the Bauhaus wanted to be more than just the amalgamation of an
art academy and a school of arts and crafts: instead its teaching was dominated
by the both symbolic and practical goal of Bauen-building.”[2]
Their
primary intention was to integrate art, technology and craftsmanship by ignoring
precedent and generating a new design philosophy. “ It is naturally vital for
everyone that we attract strong, lively personalities. We must not starts with
mediocrity; it is our duty to enlist powerful, famous personalities wherever
possible, even if we do not yet fully understand them”[3]
The course was often taught by visual artists, including Paul Klee, Vasily
Kandinsky, and Josef Albers and among others. They believed that design of any
sort ought to be considered a high art as does painting or sculpture. The
curriculum commenced with a preliminary course that immersed the students, who
came from a diverse range of social and educational backgrounds, in the study
of materials, color theory, and formal relationships in preparation for more
specialized studies. Following studies students entered lots of workshops,
which included woodworking, metalworking, weaving, typography and painting. . “Architects,
painters, and sculptors must recognize a new and learn to grasp the composite
character of a building both as an entity and in its separate parts. Only then
will their work be imbued with the architectonic spirit, which it has lost as
''salon art.'' Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure
of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in
one unity and which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million
workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.”[4]
Gropius'
initial aim was a unification of the arts through craft, aspects of this
approach proved financially impractical. While maintaining the emphasis on
craft, he repositioned the goals of the Bauhaus in 1923, stressing the
importance of designing for mass production. It was at this time that the
school adopted the slogan "Art into Industry." All teachers thought
different kinds of designs but with one of the common thing that they had in
their curriculum and the way they taught was to design with the idea of mass
production in mind. "Novel method of education in design has been widely
misunderstood and misinterpreted. The present generation is inclined to think
of it as a rigid stylistic dogma of yesterday whose usefulness has come to an
end because its ideological and technical premises are now outdated. This view
confuses a method of approach with the practical results obtained by it at a
particular period of its application. The Bauhaus was not concerned with the
formulation of time bound, stylistic concepts, and its technical methods were
not ends in themselves. It was created to show how a multitude of individuals,
willing to work concertedly but without losing their identity, could evolve a
kinship of expression in their response to the challenges of the day. Its aim
was to give a basic demonstration of how to maintain unity in diversity, and it
did this with the materials, techniques, and form concepts germane to its time.
It was this method of approach that was revolutionary…”[5]
It was considered to be quite controversial at the time but after a while it
actually began to catch on and became wildly popular, and continues to be a
massive influence in architectural design and even to this day. It was quite
revolutionary for it's time and actually the name Bauhaus was an inversion of
the word Hausbau which in German roughly translated means house construction.
First it was a school in Germany but today Bauhaus art is known as just one of
the primary influences in the architectural design. The Bauhaus style became
one of the most influential currents in Modernist architecture and modern
design. The Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in
art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and
typography.
In 1925
Mies van der Rohe had been involved in fetching the Bauhaus from Weimar to
Dessau; in 1930 he had played a key role in Hannes Meyer’s dismissal. The
school moved only to be shut down forever by the Nazi Regime in 1933. The Nazi
party had been opposed to Bauhaus for many years because they believed that it
was closely related to communism since many members of the school were Russian.
Prinzhorn organized a declaration of confidence in Mies van der Rohe, which was
sent to the mayor, Hesse, who in turn used it as an argument in his last speech
before the final vote on Nazi motion to close The Bauhaus. This declaration
stated: “ In his character, in his intellectual stance, in his professional
convictions and powers of design as expressed in his buildings and work, we see
in Mies van der Rohe an exemplary German architect. It is our conviction that,
under his direction, young people are educated in honest, artist design and
responsible working. We would consider it regrettable should Mies van der Rohe
be deprived, through the closure of the Bauhaus, of the opportunity to educate
young people according to his convictions.”[6]
The new building contained many features that later became hallmarks of
modernist architecture, including steel and frame construction, a glass curtain
wall, and an asymmetrical, pinwheel plan, throughout which Gropius distributed
studio, classroom, and administrative space for maximum efficiency and spatial
logic.
In its last few years the Bauhaus was dominated by architecture, but
it produced a great range of stuffs, with many of them being adopted for
large-scale manufacture.
Bibliography
Books:
- Droste, Magdalena Bauhaus, 1919-1933, Köln ; London :
Taschen
- Michael Siebenbrodt ; Jeff Wall ; Klaus Weber 1960, Bauhaus
: A Conceptual Model, Ostfildern
- Walter Gropius, letter to Ernst Hardt of 14.4.1919. in
Reginald R. Isaacs: Walter Gropius. Der Mensch und sein Werk. Vol.1. p.68
- The Visual Dictionary of Interior Architecture and
Design, (2009), AVA Publishing
- “The Role of the Architect in Modern Society,” address
given at Columbia University (March 1961)
- Hans Prinzhorn: Vertrauenskundgebung fur Mies van der
Rohe. Archiv Nurnberg(note 130). Grote estate, sheet 242.
Websites:
- The Bauhaus, 1919–1933 :Alexandra Griffith Winton,
Independent Scholar
- Walter Gropius, Program of the State Bauhaus in Weimar
(1919), http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=4133
-Bauhaus Archiv
http://www.bauhaus.de/bauhausarchiv/publikationen+M52087573ab0.html
Videos:
- Modernism:Bauhaus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8zuGsX_z_Y
Study of Bauhaus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv-OwS67OHM&feature=related
- Bauhaus documentary part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZOqTFtEHAw&feature=related
- Bauhaus documentary part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyEDZD0rl6U
- Bauhaus documentary part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq8AnYL5-30
[1] The
Bauhaus, 1919–1933 :Alexandra Griffith Winton, Independent Scholar
[2] Bauhaus,
1919-1933, Bauhaus Archive, Magdalena Droste
[3] Walter
Gropius, letter to Ernst Hardt of 14.4.1919.
[4] Walter
Gropius, Program of the State Bauhaus in Weimar (1919)
[5] “The
Role of the Architect in Modern Society,” (March 1961)
[6] Hans
Prinzhorn: Vertrauenskundgebung fur Mies van der Rohe. Archiv Nurnberg(note
130). Grote estate, sheet 242.
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