Bauhaus
is an archetypical modern movement. Like many of the other schools of
Modernism, they rejected the elevation of fine arts over artisanship and
embraced technology while denouncing the ills wrought by modernization.
Although Bauhaus began as part of the international Expressionist movement, the
influence of Russian constructivism and De Stijl lead Gropius, Meyer,
Moholy-Nagy and others to abandoned Expressionism in favor of New Objectivity.
Bauhauss modernism and radical ideology lead to its persecution by the Nazis,
but this persecution was not enough to stem the momentum Bauhaus was building.
Rather than crush the movement, Nazi persecution lead to the further spread of
it. Most of members of the Bauhaus movement fled Germany to lead further careers
in the United States. While there they changed the face of many artistic and
architectural schools all over the country. Their vision of unity, inherent in
their internationalism, their combination of craftsmanship and theory as well
as their attempt to unify all the disciplines lives on today in both the new
Bauhaus school and in artists and schools spread all over the world.
In
discussing Bauhauss international influences, it is especially important to
first mention what exactly Bauhaus was rejecting. Traditionally there has been
a strong distinction between learning that took place in an Academy and
learning that took place in a workshop. Since the time of the Ancient Greeks
the Academy was a place of lofty ideals and theoretical investigation. The workshop,
on the other hand, was the realm of the practical, the common. This dichotomy
continued on into the Renaissance, where a strict hierarchy was maintained,
placing the literary arts and painting at the top and the work of artisans and
craftsman at the bottom. One of the purposes of the Bauhaus movement was to
question this dichotomy. For the artists of Bauhaus, there is no hierarchy of
the arts. The practicalcommon arts are just as significant as the loftier art
forms. In fact, they believed that these loftier art forms should be brought to
the level of the practical arts. They looked forward to the day when there
would be no such distinction. But the Bauhaus movement was not the only
movement that critiqued the loftier art forms. With the advent of Modernism,
artist movements all over Europe were popping up to critique notions of what
people considered art. Not only did they critique art, but they critiqued
society and attempted to transform it. Modernists often lamented the
exploitative nature of modernity while also rejoicing in the technological
developments that stemmed from this exploitative system. To quote Peter Childs
On the one hand, Modernist artists kicked
against the homogenization required by mass systems.
On the other hand, they celebrated the new conditions of production,
circulation and consumption
engendered by technological change (Harvey 1989 23). There were paradoxical if not opposed trends towards revolutionary and
reactionary positions, fear of the new and delight
at the disappearance of the old, nihilism and fanatical enthusiasm, creativity
and despair.
Childs
also argues that the Modernist movement was linked to internationalism for two
reasons. One reason was that the exploitative systems of Modernity operated on
an international scale. The other reason was that the advent of technology
allowed people to longer travel in shorter times and also facilitated long
distance communication. These two features of modernity allowed the world to
become, in a sense, smaller. Modernists recognized this fact and often drew
from international influences in their art. The Bauhaus movement, as a
prototypical Modernist art movement, is no different. Artists of the Bauhaus
movement took their cues from a number of international movements, many of
which will be explored in their essay.
One
only need look at the groups extensive collaboration efforts to see its
inherent internationalism. Much of these international collaboration efforts
took place even before the movement was established. One example of such
efforts is the groups extended involvement with Expressionism.
Walter Gropius,
director of Bauhaus from 1919 to 1928, was one of the key members of the
Expressionist Architecture movement. This movement was comprised of
international architects who sought to innovation architecture using
experimental themes and mediums. Sometimes these architects would use such
experimental materials such as glass, brick or steel in order to imitate
naturalistic objects like caves or rocks. Other times they drew from Gothic,
Rococo or eastern influences using these materials. Expressionist Architects
main purpose was to create a feeling or a mood with their works, foregoing
realism in favor of a more novel, stylistic form of representation (often using
craftsmanship in order to accomplish this task). Although these objectives
differ somewhat from the primary objectives of Bauhaus, there is one thing in
particular the two movements have in common the notion of architecture as a
form of artistic expression and not just a practical craft. This was one of the
foundational ideas of the Bauhaus and did not just apply to architecture, but
to all practical crafts.
In
1923 Bauhaus seemed to have all but abandoned Expressionism to move onto
another international art movement that would further perpetuate its
development. There were a number of reasons for this abandonment. For one, the
elaborate nature of Expressionist buildings made them quite difficult to build.
Many of the Expressionist architects fought in World War I and came out of the
war with a sense of optimism, which they then displayed in their work. As
Europe began to face economic hardship, these Expressionist buildings did not
fit the mood or the budget of the peoples of Europe. Architects began to move
towards a more rationalistic style of architecture, one they felt was just as
expressive, while also capturing the spirit of their time. This transformation
of style from Expressive Architecture to a more sharp, mechanistic style of
architecture was influenced greatly by the De Stijl movement, which in turn,
was influenced by the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Like
the Expressionist Architects who sought emotion in their elaborate forms, the
members of the De Stijl movement also sought a certain spirituality in their
work, except this spirituality came about not through lavish stylization, but
by pure colour, form and abstraction. According to the Tate Gallerys online
article on De Stijl, this movement advocates only primary colours and
non-colours, only squares and rectangles, only straight and horizontal or
vertical line. Generally, De Stijl artists
used only simple and abstract forms in their painting and architecture,
yet despite their adoration of geometric abstraction they did not use
symmetrical forms. The face of De Stijl was Theo van Doesburg, a Dutch artist
whose charismatic persona brought fame to the movement. In 1922 Van Doesburg
moved to Weimar in order to promote De Stijl to Gropius. Gropius agreed with
much of what Van Doesburg had to say, but he ultimately decided not to hire him
as a Bauhaus teacher. Despite Gropiuss decision not to hire Van Doesburg, the
tenets of the De Stijl movement would still have a large amount of influence on
the Bauhaus style.
The De Stijl movement was not the
only movement to draw Bauhaus away from Expressionism and towards abstraction.
The Constructivism movement, particularly that of the Vkhutemas school and El
Lissitzky, was particularly influential on Bauhaus. Vkhutemas was a Russian
state art and technical school founded in Moscow shortly after Bauhaus was
founded (1920). Despite Gropiuss denial of Bauhaus as a political movement,
Bauhaus shared a number of things in common with this explicitly political art
movement. The school was founded by Vladimir Lenin with the purpose of taking
high quality artists and instructing them on the practical arts. Bauhaus, too had a similar directive,
focusing particularly on the merging of craft and art. It was Gropuiss belief
that this sort of functional craftsmanship would inevitably lead to the merging
of all the art forms. In addition to these ideological similarities, both were
the first schools to train artists in Modernism. During Gropiuss time the ideological and
methodological similarities of the two schools brought them together and this
co-operation continued under Hannes Meyers tenure as director of the program.
In particular, Russian artist and Vkhutemas teacher El Lissitzky was a
prominent influence on Bauhaus. In 1921 Lissitzky moved from Russia to Berlin
to serve as Russias cultural ambassador to Germany. His purpose in moving to
Germany was to expose Russian art to Western Europe while also opening up the
pathways of communication between Eastern European and Western European
artists. Lissitzky himself was the model of internationalism. In addition to
his native Russian, he also spoke German fluently and used this skill to
present his ideas to German-speaking audiences. He also published a journal of
his ideas in German, French and Russian. The man was inspired by the utopian dream of
internationalism. Like many Bauhaus
artists he was involved in lithography, typography and graphic design, but his
introduction of novel artistic concepts to the German speaking world was where
most of his influence lay.
Lissitzky
spent a great deal of time creating international links between artists and
promoting his ideas in order to disseminate his avant-garde aesthetic
throughout Europe. This enthusiastic campaigning lead to the creation of strong
relationships between himself and many artists, including Van Doesburg,
Hungarian Dadaist Kurt Schwitters and
Lszl Moholy-Nagy, who would later become part of Bauhaus. In the 1910s
Moholy-Nagy was attracted to the drawings of artists of Rembrandt and van Gogh
due to the treatment of lines in their work, prompting him to study composition
and then color. In 1922 he met Schwitters, and began attending the
Constructivist meetings in Hanover. That summer he published the article Produktion-Reproduktion in De Stijl. In 1923 Moholy-Nagy met
Lissitzky and shortly thereafter became an instructor of the foundational
course at Bauhaus.
In
1923, Expressionist Johannes Itten was forced to resign so that Moholy-Nagy
could take his place, signaling the schools desire to shift from Expressionism
to a curriculum of design based on functional abstraction. Moholy-Nagy,
together with Lissitzky and Schwitters, strongly advocated the international
movement of Russian Constructivism, a style of geometric representation
advocated by Lissitzky. The Constructivist movement had a large international
following, influencing other international movements like De Stijl while also
influencing modern architecture. Constructivism had particular influence on the
international Neue Sachlichkeit movement, of which Bauhaus is apart.
The
architects of Neue Sachlichkeit (or New Objectivity) positioned themselves as
diametrically opposed to Expressionism. The New Objectivity architects sought
to modernize (mostly German) cities using glass and sharp geometric forms.
Although New Objectivity began as a movement composed primarily of Germans, it
was not long before the movement spread to places outside of Germany. It first
spread to Switzerland and the Netherlands with the ABC Group, a leftist,
technology-focused group comprised of Lissitzky and Hannes Meyer, among others.
Only a few years later Meyer would take his socially-conscious Constructivist
aesthetic to the Bauhaus as its new director (from 1928-1930).
As
a strong advocate of the Constructivist aesthetic and a fervent Marxist, Meyer
brought to the Bauhaus the idea that architectures purpose was strictly
functional. According to Meyer it should be cheap and socially useful, not just
aesthetically pleasing. Meyers functionalist ethic lead to the construction of
five apartment buildings in the city of Dessau, and the headquarters of the
Federal School of the German Trade Unions in Bernau, allowing the school to
make a profit for the first time in its history. But the money Meyer brought in
was not enough to secure his place at the school as some felt that his
radicalized politics were a danger to Bauhaus as the Nazis rose to power. It
was not long before he was fired and replaced by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Mies
was also influenced by Constructivism and De Stijl, but did not share Meyers
political beliefs about the social role of architecture.
Soon
after, the Nazis came to power and denounced their work as degenerate. Works of
Bauhaus artists were showcased in the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art)
exhibition before being destroyed. But this destruction was by no means the end
of Bauhaus. In fact, it appears that one powerful motivation for Bauhauss
continued internationalism was the political circumstances of Germany itself.
Although art critics now view Bauhaus as paradigmatic of German modernism,
during their time not all Germans saw their work as representative of Germany. The Nazis
believed that Modernism was influenced by communism andor Judaism, so therefore
it was an inherently un-German movement. The stark modernity and functionality
of the Bauhaus movement contrasted immensely with the ornamental nature of
tradition German art. This combined with
the fact that many students of Bauhaus identified with communist and
socialist ideologies caused Bauhaus to be an easy target of persecution for the
Nazi party. In 1933, the Nazis forced the closure of Bauhaus.
But
this disintegration of Bauhaus in Germany did not lead to the dissolution of
the movement as a whole. After Bauhaus was forced out of Germany many of its
students and teachers went on to spread the Bauhaus ethic all over the world.
For example, Gropiuss reputation as an excellent architect landed him a job at
Harvard University. He advocated the ideas of the Bauhaus movement while also
implementing these ideas through building projects all over the United States.
Eventually many of these ideas were taken up in architectural programs in
Brooklyn College, Yale and Illinois Institute of Technology. Mies also left
Germany to pursue a career in the United States. In 1938 he moved to Chicago
and by 1946 he was head of the architectural department at the Illinois
Institute of Technology. This position allowed him the opportunity to design
all the new buildings of the school. Some of his other famous buildings include
the Farnsworth house in Chicago and the Seagram building in New York City.
Moholy-Nagy also ended up in Chicago by 1937, founded the New Bauhaus, and
later the School of Design in Chicago. Before moving to Chicago, he continued
his career in Amsterdam and London, where he worked as a designer for various
companies.
The
functionalism of the original Bauhaus helped create what is known today as the
International style. This International style is the idea of building for the
future. Their desire was that form follow function, and they were able to find
beauty in the most basic of colors and shapes, rather than extensive
ornamentation. They used industrial materials like glass, steel and concrete
that drew on simplified forms to construct objects with a social aim in mind.
They sought to mechanize our living spaces and design functional objects that
could be mass produced. In attempting to the eliminate the distinction between
the functional and the beautiful, Bauhaus changed the face of design forever.
Bauhaus offered up a utopian vision based upon the idea of unity. This meant
not just the unification of all the different mediums of art in favor of
practical application, nor did it only refer to the fusion of theory and craft.
The original Bauhaus sought an international unity by fostering relationships
before, during and after the movement was in place. This line of thought
continues in the new Bauhaus school and in artistic and architectural programs
throughout the United States.
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