bauhaus

bauhausarth 2100 • KR rudynskispring 01

•Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956)1. Bauhaus Manifesto Cover- woodcut “Cathedral”;19192. Europaische Graphic, woodcut title page; 19213. First Bauhaus Seal, student design; Johannnes Auerbach; 1919

• Joost Schmidt (1893-1948)4. Bauhaus Poster; 19235. Offset 7, book jacket; 1926

•Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946)6. Bauhaus Book 12,;19257. Bauhaus Book 14,;19298. Bauhaus Book, cover, 19259. Maleri, Photographie, Film; 1925

•Herbert Bayer (1900-1985)10. Mural designs for Weimar Bauhaus stairwell;192311. Universal type; 192512. Universal type, display version; 192513. Kandinsky Exhibition Poster; 192614. Exhibition of Arts,;192715. Bauhaus Magazine, cover; 192816. Bauhaus Magazine, cover, 192817. Section Allemande exhibition of the Deutscher Werkbund Poster, Paris; 193018. die neue linie, Outdoor billboard; 193219. Adrainol nose drops, product poster; 1935

• Jan Tschichold (1902-1974)20. Buster Keaton in: “Der General”, movie poster; 192721. The Woman without Name, movie poster; 192722. The Professional Photographer, exhibition poster; 193823. Die Neue Typographie; double spread from book, 192824. Konstruktivisten; poster, 193725. The Pelican History of Art; book cover, 194726. The Pelican Shakespeare; book cover, 194727. Die Flucht aus Derzeit; book-jacket design, 194428. Schatzkammer der Schriebkunst; Prospectus, 194529. Schatzkammer der Schriebkunst, Title page, 1945

"Only an idea

has the power

to spread so far"Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

I. LRI CONTRIBUTIONS:

1. Discuss and analyze Laszlo Moholy-Nagy philosophy about the integration of typeand photo- which he called ‘typophoto’. Utilize Bauhaus publications FourteenBauhaus Books, Bauhaus Book 12, and Bauhaus Book 14 as sources for discussion &analysis. 2. Highlight Herbert Bayer’s role & contributions at the Bauhaus, and discuss his designphilosophy for the Universal Alphabet of 1925. 3. Brief background on Jan Tschichold and discuss the turnabout in his life from typo-graphic revolutionary to guardian of traditional typography. 4. Compare/contrast Anderson University’s department of Art & Design foundationcurriculum to that of the Bauhaus.

First Bauhaus Seal, 1919-22Designed Karl-Peter Röhl

Bauhaus Seal, 1922Oskar Schlemmer

• rudynski • spring 01 • bauhaus

II. Introduction:

After W.W. I, unemployment, inflation, political chaos, and war debt took its toll on Germany. However it wasat this time that graphic design began to play a larger and more important role in the modern industrialized cities ofNorthern Europe. Not just in posters, but in advertising leaflets, corporate brochures, logo and letterhead design, cata-logues for industrial products and trade show displays.

Richard Hollis in his book Graphic Design: A Concise History states that Futurism and Italy, Constructivism fromthe Soviet Union, deStijl from the Netherlands and the Bauhaus from Germany represent the origins of modernism in20 century the graphic design. Germany found itself between two powerful and influential avant-garde: Communismand Constructivism in the U.S.S.R. from the East, and the Dutch and the deStijl from the West. Germany had its ownproud history of excellent design in Ludwig Hohlwein and Lucian Bernhard, but what was now to emerge fromGermany was to become the most influential school of design education in the 20th century. Today, students studyingin an art and design program with a “foundation program”, a “review” period, 3-dimensional design, color theory course-work, and professional internship experiences can find a link to the Bauhaus school some seven decades ago. Industrialand graphic designers share an indebtedness to the Bauhaus for its thinking on materials use, typography, page struc-ture, and the rational form follows function dictum. Although the Bauhaus was to only last in Germany for some 14years, and undergo many changes during that time, its influence was continued and experienced through the immigra-tion of many of its teachers and students throughout the world-especially in the United States. This assured the influ-ence of European modernism on American art and design then, and a ripple effect that is still experienced today.

III. Bauhaus: The Manifesto

appointed the director of the in 1919, at age 31(36 in some accounts) by Henry van de Velde.

Born into a family strong in architecture and educational connections. Studied architecture in Berlin and Munich. Joined the Berlin firm AEG headed by Peter Behrens, and became head designer in1907. Left shortly after and started his own firm. Was associated with the Werkbund, a group formed to promote good design standards among German industrialists. Its ultimate goal to the improvement in the quality of German products. He served in W. W. I and was seriously wounded in the leg on the Western Front and awarded the Iron Cross twice (Whitford, 35).

•a. Names the school Bauhaus a year later. The noun literally means ‘building’. In the Middle Ages the were guilds of masons, builders and decorators, out of which freemasons sprang.

also means ‘to grow a crop’, and this is no doubt an association that Gropius intended the name of the school to carry (Whitford, 29). •b. He strove to reorganize the relationship of fine arts and applied arts. Gropius sought a new unity of art and machine-artistically trained designers could ‘breathe a soul into the dead product of the machine’. Only the most brilliant ideas were good enough to justify multiplication by industry.•c. Authored the Bauhaus manifesto which was published in German newspapers, along with a Cathedral woodcut.“The complete building is the ultimate aim of all the visual arts. Once the noblest function of the fine arts was to embellish buildings; there were indispensable components of great architecture. Today the arts exist in isolation...Architects, painters, and sculptors must learn anew the composite character of the building as an entity...The artist is an exalted craftsman. In rare moments of inspiration, transcending his conscious will, the grace of heaven may cause his work to blossom into art. But proficiency in his craft is essential to every artist. Therein lies the prime source of creative imagination.” (Meggs, 288)•d. For Gropius, the building was a social, intellectual, and symbolic activity. The Gothic Cathedral represents the unity of the three forms (Painting, sculpture, architecture). An allegory of the total workof art and symbol of social unity. A representation of people’s longing for a spiritual beauty that went beyond utility and need (Meggs, 289)•e. The three major aims of the manifesto: 1. ...to rescue all the arts from the isolation in which each found themselves in...and to train artists to collaborate in future projects where all their skills would be combined, 2. ...to elevate the status of the crafts to which the ‘fine arts’ enjoyed, and 3. to establish ‘constant contact with the leaders of the crafts and industries of the country’.•f. Gropius brought an intensely visionary point of view and drew inspiration from Expressionism.

Expressionism urged social change and even revolution: these were to flow naturally out of a profound change in human consciousness. Art, the Expressionist believed, could change the world (Whitford, 26).


IV. The Bauhaus at Weimar (1 919-1924)

•a. Gropius was strongly anti-academic. He organized his school into workshops, not studios. The aim of the workshops was to overlap and integrate theoretical form teaching with practical workshop training, and also eliminate ‘status wars’. Workshops included pottery, textile, metal, furniture, stained glass, wood-carving, bookbinding, graphic printing, and theater. Signifying that the school was craft based, and operating in the ‘real world’. He disliked the language “professors” and organized the workshop leadership into two equal groups: ‘Masters of Form’, to help student explore their own creativity and ‘Workshop Masters’, to help students in methods and technique. These two groups were to work in close cooperation to provide students a more comprehensive and unified education–which was limited to a maximum of 4 years. The model Gropius used was based upon the medieval lines-master (Workshop Masters & Masters of Form), journeymen, and apprentice (Students).•d. Approximately 75 women were enrolled when the Bauhaus opened. The Weimar constitution guaranteed women unrestricted freedom of study. Academies could no longer discriminate. Women were usually directed to weaving workshops, with pottery and bookbinding as possible alternatives. Many men dismissed their art as ‘feminine’ or ‘handicraft’. Men were afraid to have the Bauhaus appear to arty-crafty–which could threaten the goal of the Bauhaus–building or architecture.•c. Gropius brought together an astonishingly diverse range of artists to the Weimar school:

1. First appointments included painters Johannes Itten, Lyonel Feininger, and sculptor Gerhard Marcks.2. Painters Paul Klee (1879-1940) and Oskar Schlemmer, and Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) in 1920 and 1922 respectively.

•d. Johannes Itten (Swiss; 1888-1967) who was responsible for the introduction of a preliminary course called This become a central feature of the Bauhaus-if a student didn’t successfully complete this coursework, they couldn’t move onto the next workshop.• Itten’s pedagogical principles were based upon intuition and method, or subjective experience and objective recognition. In two of his exercises he required students to work with various textures forms, colors and tones in both 2- and 3-dimensions. The second demanded an analysis of art in terms of rhythmic lines which were meant to capture the spirit, the expressive content of the original. He would frequently start classes with breathing exercises, meditation, and physical bending & stretching. • Itten’s curious religious practices, teaching methods, and influence upon the students made Gropius uncomfortable. Itten didn’t appreciate Gropius’s interest in business/school collaborations. These differences eventually led to Itten’s resignation.•e. A tremendous group of students emerge from the early courses at the Bauhaus:It wasn’t easy to get into the Bauhaus, enrollment was never more than 100 at a time, and rejection after the first course was high. The total student enlistment was1,250 (Whitford, 69Herbert Bayer, Joost Schmidt, Marcel Breuer, and Josef Albers. They had a hand in all media while in school, and continued their mastery in a wide range of media thereafter. Each returned to teach at the Bauhaus later.•f. The beginning of change: New Unity of Art & Technology:•The Bauhaus enjoyed a exchange of ideas with many other avant garde designers/artists: Theo van Doesburg-Dutch deStijl; El Lissitzky-Constructivist•Laszlo-Moholy-Nagy was appointed as Itten’s replacement in 1923. A Hungarian Contructivist. Follower of Vladmir Tatlin and Lissitzky. He explored photography, painting, film,

sculpture, and graphic design. He introduced new materials like plexiglas, new techniques like photomontage, and photograms, visual means including kinetic motion, light, and transparency. Moholy-Nagy was passionate about typography. He saw graphic design,particularly the poster, as evolving toward the typophoto. He called this objective integration of word and image to communicate a message with immediacy “the new visual literature.”Moholy was ahalf-way house between the rigor of the de Stijl and Constructivism. The appointment of Mohly-Nagy was uncomfortably received by other colleagues and students–it signaled a clear shift in Gropius’s vision. A move away from the revival of craftsmanship to a new breed of designer capable of conceiving products made for the machine.

•g. Conflicts with the Thuringian government prompted Gropius to search for a new site for the school.


V. The Bauhaus at Dessau: 1 925-1932

The Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925. Progressively, new buildings were designed by Gropius, and a new curriculumput into place. Gropius continued to change the orientation of the curriculum away from the medieval structure–to onebased upon a ‘business’ structure. Masters were now professors, and trained craftsman were employed but they wereno longer treated as equals. Gropius had in part, created the structure in Weimar out of necessity–there were few indi-viduals equally gifted and trained in artistic theory and craft practice. Enough students had now graduated, and werequalified to undertake the dual roles of Master of Form and Workshop Masters. The new charge now was to train ‘ anew breed of collaborator for industry, craft, and building who is a master equally of technique and form’ (Whitford,157). A ‘Bauhaus Corporation’ was formed to engage in business enterprise. Goals were to handle sale of workshop pro-totypes to industry. Abundant ideas flowed from the Bauhaus at this time to influence 20th century design–product,architecture, furniture, and graphic design.

•a. Some workshops were closed, others were absorbed into new ones. 6 of the 12 professors were former students including Albers, Bayer, Breuer, and Schmidt.•b. Gropius gave up working in the cabinet-making workshop to focus on architectural commissions, and to introduce a department of architecture focus to the Bauhaus. (1927) Hannes Meyer (1889-1954), a Swiss architect, was hired to head it.•c. The printmaking workshop, which primarily was devoted to the production of graphic art, now was dedicated to layout, typography, and advertising. Former student Herbert Bayer lead the new workshop.

1. Herbert Bayer (Austrian, 1900-1984) :•a. Student at the Bauhaus in 1921, carried out typographic commissions while a student. Studied under Moholy-Nagy ,the de Stijl, and Lissitzky’s also studied with Kandinsky in his wall-painting workshop (mural) providing him with disciplined organization of form and color that shows up in his painting, and would also be made explicit in his functional typography-clarity and uncluttered.•b. Worked with an architect in Darmstadt until 1925; at this time he was introduced to packaging design•c. He put in charge of the school’s printing department in 1925•d. His typographic approach included heavy rules, asymmetrical page layout. He considered capital letters and serifs redundant. •e. His campaign against serifs and capital letters was at a time when German design was using "Gothic" style lettering and required the use of capitals on every noun. He proposed to Gropius that the Bauhaus should follow his plan to eliminate their use. Bayer felt that lowercase alone was more economical because it required just one alphabet instead of two. Bayer, along with Moholy championed the use of the sans-serif type at the Bauhaus.•f. Undertook the design of a new type style ‘Universal’ (1926) to implement his theories.•g. Bayer resigned in 1928, and was replaced by Joost Schmidt. Bayer moved on to run his own advertising agency in Berlin, and then moved to America to work in advertising and corporate identity.

2. Walter Gropius resigns in 1928, and Haanes Meyer takes over and remains until 1930 when he resigns do to ongoing difficulties with the Dessau municipal authorities. Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, created a short-lived stability, before a Nazi-dominated Dessau city council withdrew all staff contracts in 1932. He attempted to keep the Bauhaus open in Berlin in an abandoned telephone factory, but continued Nazi harassment caused them to dissolve the Bauhaus in July 1933.3. Attempts to revive the Bauhaus ideas and methods emerged in America. The ‘New Bauhaus’was founded by Moholy-Nagy in Chicago in 1937. Gropius went to work at Harvard, Albers worked at both Black Mountain College, and Yale.

• That there was ever a Bauhaus style was always denied by Walter Gropius– he insisted that what the school had sought to develop was not a uniform visual identity but an attitude towards creativity intended to result in variety (Whitford, 198). However a distinctive Bauhaus style did become associated with the school and it is a testament, albeit maybe an undesired one, of the significant influence the people, program, ideas, and the work produced had on the world.


VI. BIBLIOGRAPHY :

Chwast, Seymour & Heller, Steven. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1988) pgs. 112-119

Cohen, Arthur A. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1984)

Droste, Magdalena. (Germany: Bauhaus-Archive Museum, 1990)

Hollis, Richard. (New York: Thames & Hudson. 1994) Chapter 6,

Humphries, Lund. (London: Lund Humphries Publishers Limited, 1975)

Lupton, Ellen and Miller, J. Abbott, Editors. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. 1991)

Meggs, Philip. 2nd ed.(New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992) Chapter 19,

Whitford, Frank. (New York: Thames & Hudson. 1984)

Bauhaus Chess Set, 1924Designed by Josef Hartwig

Chess Table, 1924Heinz Nösselt

plate page 4 • rudynski • spring 01 • bauhaus

Jan Tschichold

1. Cover of Fototek, 19302. Film Poster for DieHose, 1927

1 2

3

4

Jan Tschichold

3. Title page for Book, 19454. Cover for Penguin Books,Shakespeare, 1947

plate page 3 • rudynski • spring 01 • bauhaus

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

1. Bauhaus Book 14

2. Bauhaus Book 12

3. International Architecture Cover, leftDust Jacket for Bauhaus Book 14, right

4. Light Modulator

5. Light Modulator Sequence

6. From Radio Tower, Berlin,1928.Photograph

1 2

3

4

5

6

Bauhaus Manifesto, Walter GropiusWoodcut by Lyonel Feininger, 1919

Bauhaus Program Diagram, Gropius. 1922

Bauhaus Magazine, 1928Herbert Bayer

Bauhaus Exhibition, Poster, 1923Joost Schmidt

Type Design for Universal, 1925Herbert Bayer

page 6 • rudynski • spring 01 • bauhaus

Study for Bauhaus ExhibitionPoster, 1968

bauhaus

Documents