Luke_O'Reilly: Book Bauhaus Influencing the Future

Seeds Of Modernism: the making of the Bauhaus concept, developments in design history 1830 to 1950

Bauhaus Influencing the future Bauhaus Archive Berlin Museum of Design

By James Volks & Susan Harrison

Bauhaus Archive Berlin Museum of Design

Bauhaus Influencing The Future Seeds Of Modernism

By James Volks & Susan Harrison

Bauhaus Archive Berlin Museum of Design Bauhaus Archive Berlin Museum of Design

ents 01.

02.

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01-08 Introduction

09-24 Walter Gropius Futuristic Design

25-40 Herbert Bayer A Man Of Many Trades

cont 04.

05.

41-56 Laszlo Moholy-Nagy Visionary Aproach Of Making Artwork

57-64 conclusion

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Seeds Of Modernism

Introduction Throughout the 20th century, several styles of avant-garde art helped shape modern art. While many of these genres, including subconsciousbased surrealism and energetic abstract expressionism, predominantly favored paintings, the Bauhaus movement encompassed a wide array of mediums, materials, and disciplines.

Ranging from paintings and graphics to architecture and interiors, Bauhaus art dominated many outlets of experimental European art throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Though it is most closely associated with Germany, it attracted and inspired artists of all backgrounds.

Today, its influence can be found in art and design all over the world, whether within the walls of a museum or on a suburban street.

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What is Bauhaus?

01. The Bauhaus Dessau by architect Walter Gropius, 1925-1926

Bauhaus—literally translated to “construction house”—originated as a German school of the arts in the early 20th century. Founded by Walter Gropius, the school eventually morphed into its own modern art movement characterized by its unique approach to architecture and design. Today, Bauhaus is renowned for both its unique aesthetic that inventively combines the fine arts with arts and crafts as well as its enduring influence on modern and contempory art

Introduction

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Seeds Of Modernism

History

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In 1919, German architect Walter Gropius established Staatliches Bauhaus, a school dedicated to uniting all branches of the arts under one roof. The school acted as a hub for Europe’s most experimental creatives, with well-known artists like Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee offering their expertise as instructors. Bauhaus as an educational institution existed in three cities—Weimar (1919 to 1925), Dessau (1925 to 1932), and Berlin (1932 to 1933) Weimar, aka State Bauhaus in Weimar, was where Gropius laid the groundwork for Bauhaus to come; it’s where he established ideals that would be considered visionary for the time. Art, according to his manifesto and the program, should serve a social role and there should no longer be a division of craft-based disciplines.

At Weimar, the “stage workshop” was an important part of the education. It was directed

by Lothar Schreyer from 1921 to 1923 and then

by Oskar Schlemmer from 1923 to 1925. It brought together visual and performing arts and stressed an interdisciplinary approach.

Dessau was considered the hotspot in the heyday of Bauhaus. It arose after the politically motivated close of Weimar. During this time, it set forth on the path of designing new industrial products for mass consumption. (Most of the products and designs that are well known today came from Dessau.) It was also here that the famous Bauhaus Building was planned and built by Gropius. This iteration of Bauhaus was dissolved on September 30, 1932.

Berlin was the last phase of Bauhaus. Due to mounting pressures from the Nazis and cutbacks in funding, there was limited work done during this time. The move to Berlin happened after the closure of Dessau, and Bauhaus masters and students reconvened in October 1932 out of an abandoned telephone factory. By April 11, 1933, however, the premises were searched and closed by the police and SA. The teaching staff dissolved the Bauhaus in July 1933. But even after facing permanent closure, the influence and aesthetic of the school persisted, culminating in the Bauhaus movement.

Introduction

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Seeds Of Modernism

Style of Bauhaus

Bauhaus Art

Text Gathered From the Modern Net

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The style of Bauhaus is commonly characterized as a combination of the Arts and Crafts movement with modernism, as evident in its emphasis on function and, according to the Tate, its “aim to bring art back into contact with everyday life.” Thus, typical Bauhaus designs, whether evident in painting, architecture, or interior design—feature little ornamentation and a focus on balanced forms and abstract shapes.

In art, this emphasis on function is apparent in the balanced compositions of abstract paintings

by Bauhaus artists like Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Undoubtedly inspired by architecture, the paintings typically pair flat planes with overlapping shapes to suggest dimensionality.

02. Bauhaus Exhibition Poster (1923)

Introduction

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Walter Gropius Futuristic design

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Creating the Bauhaus

The Bauhaus was established just after World War I. It is one of the most renowned and influential modern art schools. Bauhaus approached design in a way of combining fine art and arts and craft, leading to its unique and revolutionary style, and making it very influential in the development of graphic design in the 20th century. The Bauhaus was founded by a man called Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany. Gropius realized that he could match mass production with the artists individuality, the school achieved this using simplistic forms in the making of designed pieces. This was the real first school that was able to harmonize mass production and capture an artist free spirit.

Futuristic design

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Seeds Of Modernism

The F51 Armchair

In 1920 Gropius designed the F51 armchair. The design of F51 is gravity defiant in form. It is composed of two C-shaped elements in a way that they continue to convey suspense. The chair has a cubic form making it look heavy, this is contrasted by its simple support that give the armchair an aura of floating above the floor. The projecting frame lifts the back of the seat and armrest upholstery so that it levitates above the floor. The chair itself truly shows Gropius’ future forward design approach, which challenged how things were traditionally done.

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‘We are in the arcanum of modernism. The F51 (1920) is not just any armchair, it is the iconic armchair for the director’s room in the Weimar Bauhaus. Walter Gropius had already injected his modernist dynamic into the building and created a small holistic work of art, encompassing interiors and furniture, tapestry and ceiling lamp.

Nothing is randomly chosen and everything is connected. If you study the isometric layout of the director’s room, you can see the furniture as part of a three-dimensional coordinate system.’

Here we are looking at what a chair does to a room. Walter Gropius is thinking about the aesthetic of what adding a chair that is so cubic in form, and how it can transform a room.

Showing how forward-thinking Gropius was for his time.

Futuristic design

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Seeds Of Modernism

“ to defy gravity and overcome the earth’s inertia in impression and appearance.”

Walter Gropius

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03. Walter Gropius’ , Office in the Bauhaus

Futuristic design

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The D51 Armchair The Gropius Faguswerk Alfeld Armchair, the D51, is a stunningly clean visitor chair. Designed by Walter Gropius, the Fagus Factory was erected in 1911. A landmark in the history of modern architecture, the Fagus Factory was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2011.

Visiting the Fagus Factory in 1972, Axel and Werner Bruchhäuser chanced upon a group of white chairs in the vest­ibule. Axel Bruchhäuser’s persistent inquiries as to the provenance of these objects led him to a book on the construction of the Fagus Factory, within which he discovered a design sketch by Gropius. A request to Ise Gropius for a production license met with an enthusiastic response. Over the decades, Bruchhäuser maintained close ties with Ise Gropius and subsequently with her daughter Ati Gropius, who studied under Josef Albers at Black Mountain College. It was, in fact, Ise Gropius who would eventually introduce Marcel Breuer and Axel Bruchhäuser.

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Futuristic design

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Modular architecture

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Parallel to the Bauhaus Building, the city of Dessau commissioned Walter Gropius to construct three pairs of identical semidetached houses for the Bauhaus masters and a detached house for the director.

These were built in a small pine wood on the street now known as the Ebertallee.

Gropius planned to build the complex based on a modular principle, using industrially prefabricated components. With this he wished to realise the principles of rational construction, both in the architecture and in the process of building per se. In view of the technical resources available at the time, his plan was only partially realised.

The buildings take the form of interlocking cubic structures of various heights. Towards the street the semi-detached houses are distinguished by generously glazed studios; vertical strip windows on the sides let light into the staircases. Only the director’s house featured an asymmetric arrangement of windows. The light-coloured houses have generously-sized terraces and balconies and feature colourful accents on the window reveals, the undersides of the balconies and the drainpipes.

Information Gathered from the Bahuahs dessau Museum, 04. The Bauhaus Master Houses

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The Bauhaus Archive

The building, which has the full name Bauhaus-Archiv/Museum für Gestaltung, holds a collection of of archival material from the school. It also contains exhibition space, presenting the permanent collection, and major exhibitions on the work of artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee.

The design was drastically altered from Gropius’ initial proposal but it retains several of his ideas, particularly the characteristic “shed roofs”, designed to bring indirect natural light throughout the interior.

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The notion to begin compiling a collection of items from the Bauhaus’ history was first proposed by the German art historian Hans Maria Wingler in 1960, as a way to continue promoting the school’s principles following its closure in 1933.

With support from key Bauhaus members, including its founder Gropius, the institution built up an extensive collection of works that were housed initially at a the Ernst Ludwig Building in Darmstadt.

Written by Alyn Griffiths, dezeen

As it became clear that the rapidly expanding collection would require its own home, Gropius drew up a design for a permanent archive building, intended to provide “a vivid encounter with the Bauhaus”.

Local politics prevented the archive from being constructed on the planned site in Darmstadt, and when West Berlin’s municipality offered the required space and financial support for the project it was decided to relocate the institution.

In 1971 the Bauhaus-Archiv moved to temporary accommodation in Charlottenburger Schlossstrasse and, following years of delays caused by political interventions and financial restrictions, the foundation stone for the new facility was finally laid at a site beside the Landwehrkanal in 1976.

The relocation and various planning complications meant that the building, which was completed in 1979, is a drastically modified version of the architect’s original vision, which Gropius never got to see as he died in 1969.

Futuristic design

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“ The mind is like an umbrella –

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it functions best when open.”

Walter Gropius

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Herbert Bayer

A Man of Many Trades Artistic polymath Herbert Bayer was one of the Bauhaus’s most influential students, teachers, and proponents, advocating the integration of all arts throughout his career. Bayer began his studies as an architect in 1919 in Darmstadt. From 1921 to 1923 he attended the Bauhaus in Weimar, studying mural painting with Vasily Kandinsky and typography, creating the Universal alphabet, a typeface consisting of only lowercase letters that would become the signature font of the Bauhaus. Bayer returned to the Bauhaus from 1925 to 1928 (moving in 1926 to Dessau, its second location), working as a teacher of advertising, design, and typography, integrating photographs into graphic compositions.

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Information From an Interview with the M0MA Museum

A Man Of Many Trades

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05. Kraus Glassmakers, Rooftop Advertisement Herbert Bayer (1921–1922)

Rooftop Advertisements

Herbert Bayer was commissioned to do an advertisement for glass painter Ernst Kraus in 1923, Bayer made a series of rooftop advertisements that could be used.On creating this advert Bayer used Gauche and pencil on paper as a blueprint of how the advertisement would come together. He uses mainly primary colours on the multiple signs. The advertisement itself is very simple with a yellow arrow on a blue backdrop pointing down to a sign that says ‘GLASSMALLER, Kraus’. The simple nature of the design keeps it clear to the customer and where to find the shop.

The advertisement is split into three sides of the structure, so the advert can be seen from all angles.

A Man Of Many Trades

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“ My work seen in its totality is a statement about the integration of the contemporary artist into an industrial society” Herbert Bayer

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06. The Lonely Metropolitan, Herbert bayer (1932)

A Man Of Many Trades

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07. Still Life Herbert Bayer, 1936

A Man Of Many Trades

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Bayer and Typography Bayer not trained as a typographer Bayer was, of course, not a trained typographer: in his own 1971 book Typography and Design and the Bauhaus, he confesses, “it was much easier to undo traditional concepts since most of us had not received traditional training as typographers and thus were not limited by received ideas”.

Many exhibition posters and catalogues later, Bayer quit the Bauhaus in 1928, shortly after the departure of Gropius. Some suspect that an affair between Bayer and Ise Gropius sped up this departure, as well as leading to Bayer’s wife Irene leaving him (they would divorce in 1945) and taking their daughter Julia with her.

Following stints as art director of German Vogue, and at advertising agency Dorland, Bayer established his own practice working as a painter, art director and designer. It was here that Beyer also began to work with photography, developing his striking surrealist collages.

Information writen

by Jon Astbury, dezeen

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Bayer “appalled how blind” he was over Nazism As with many Bauhaus luminaries, Bayer’s relationship with Nazism was more complicated than the history of the wider school suggests. In a period Bayer later referred to in his biography as “my advertising purgatory”, his practice worked on a number of brochures and posters for the government – some, such as leaflets for the Hitler Youth, being far more questionable than others.

He would look back “appalled how blind” he had been. But at the time Bayer claimed to be apolitical, feeling he had little choice in taking the commissions. That he needed the money was certainly true.

08 . State Bauhaus in Weimar 1919-1923 (1923), front cover (design by Herbert Bayer)

A Man Of Many Trades

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09 . Herbert Bayer Dessau, Deutschland, alte Kultur, neue Arbeitsstätten 1926

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The manual skill and approach of the craftsman was seen to be inevitably replaced by mechanical techniques. Once more it became clear that typography is not self-expression within predetermined aesthetics, but that it is conditioned by the message it visualizes.That typographic aesthetics were not stressed in these statements does not mean a lack of concern with them. But it appears that the searching went beyond surface effects into underlying strata. It is a fallacy to believe that styles can be created as easily and as often as fashions change. More is involved than trends of taste devoid of inner substance and structure, applied as cultural sugar-coating.

Moreover, the typographic revolution was not an isolated event but went hand in hand with a new social, political consciousness and, consequently, with the building of new cultural foundations. The artist’s acceptance of the machine as a tool for mass production has had its impression on aesthetic concepts. Since then an age of science has come upon us, and the artist has been motivated more than ever to open his mind to the new forces that shape our lives.

A Man Of Many Trades

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10. A multimedia booth for a fair, Herbert Bayer 1924

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11. Design for a cigarette kiosk, Herbert Bayer 1924 A Man Of Many Trades

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László Moholy-Nagy Visionary Aproach Of Making Art

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Visionary Approach Of Making Art

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Seeds Of Modernism

Backround

Laszlo Molohy-Nagy was a Hungarian-born American painter, sculptor, photographer, designer, theorist, and art teacher, whose main vision of art consisted of pure visual fundamentals, colour, texture, light and the balance of forms. His work had a major influence on art produced in the 20th century.

Molohy-Nagy studied law in Budapest and served in World War I. In 1921 he moved to Berlin where he was the head of a metals workshop in the Bauhaus. Molohy-Nagy worked at the Bauhaus till 1928, it was at the Bauhaus that Molohy-Nagy was able to experiment and perfect his craft, thus allowing him to teach his apprentices to a very high standard. MolohyNagy was also an extremely talented photographer who believed in almost using a camera as a paint brush, he would successfully produce photographs that look painting like.

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“ The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as the pen.”

Laszlo Molohy-Nagy

Visionary Approach Of Making Art

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Seeds Of Modernism

Konstruktion in Emaille In 1922-23 Laszlo Molohy-Nagy painted Konstruktion in Emaille also known as Telephone Painting, this painting is considered a constructivist painting as Molohy-Nagy was influenced by the Constructivism movement that had emerged from Russia in the 1910s. The Constructivist movement from Russia spread westerly and it was especially prevalent in Northern Europe where MolohyNagy was the preliminary course director in the year of the work’s completion.

In this graphic geometric form, we see a thick bold black bar vertically intersects the bare white canvas, while in the front center a red and yellow cross partially interests the black bar, and to the upper right is a blue and yellow line that intersects, which stands alone against the white background. The piece itself resembles to me an almost religious feel. With the cross like intersection of the blue and yellow lines, the heavy black block has a very hard dense sense where it leaves a massive impression on the piece, much like the catholic religion had on society especially after the war as many people would turn to god in a time like this.

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The painting has been described as baring ‘an obvious affinity to the contemporaneous Dutch movement of De Stijl particularly in the use of minimal geometrical arrangements and primary colors.’ (The Art story). Leah Dickerman has been quoted saying that Molohy-Nagy painting during this period has served as “both manifesto and testing ground for a Constructivist and de Stijl vocabulary.”. The piece is extremely innovative in the sense of both the materials used and the

techniques employed. Molohy-Nagy used porcelain enamel on sheet metal.

Molohy-Nagy would call the factory foreman, who had a gridded diagram of where the placements of where the shapes would appear on the canvas, where he wanted the exact details.

Therefore, the piece being known as Telephone Painting. Molohy-Nagy is truly an innovative artist that has changed the way in which people look at how a painting can be made.

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Seeds Of Modernism 12. A19, Painted by Moholy-Nagy (1927)

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A19 Moholy-Nagy’s first abstract paintings features opaque geometric shapes reminiscent of the works of El Lissitzky and Kazimir Malevich, yet A 19 shows him evolving a unique idiom that emphasizes translucency over solidity, foregoing the iconic geometrical shapes favored by those artists. As he said, he preferred painting “not with colors, but with light.” The cross motif that appears in his early oil and graphite works - an obvious nod to Malevich’s Suprematism - is here enlarged and doubled, and the red and black crossbeams, overlapping each other with varying levels of transparency, create a sense of dynamic movement, with their various diagonals and triangles. The white circle, revealing the colors of the crossbeams beneath it, evokes a kind of photogram effect, as it intersects asymmetrically with columns behind it.

Moholy-Nagy had mixed feelings about painting as a medium, sensing that the notion of individual creativity that it represented was

Information From The Art Story

being superseded in the machine age, and that the creative spirit needed to find a new way of interacting with and accepting the mechanical and the robotic in their work. Yet he remained engaged with developments in “fine art” going on around him, including the advent of Constructivism and De Stijl by the early 1920s.

At the same time, the work shows a more overarching interest in the lifegiving effects of light. As the art critic James Wilkes notes, the “beautifully modulated tones of an iconic painting such as A 19 are clearly a result of Moholy-Nagy’s deepening interest in light...by 1923 he thought of light as a ‘new plastic medium’, analogous to ‘color in painting and tone in music’.”

The title’s combination of letters and numbers reflects the artist’s belief, also dating from the early 1920s, that titles should suggest an objective order, analogous to a scientific formula.

As he later wrote, he was interested in art’s “primordial, basic elements,

Visionary Approach Of Making Art

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Seeds Of Modernism 13. Stage Set for Tales of Hoffmann, Designed

By Mohly-Nagy (1929)

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Photograms These ghostly traces of objects placed on photographic paper during exposure are part of a prolific legacy that included painting, sculpture and stage design.

Moholy-Nagy’s photograms have become emblematic of the medium, though they have yet to be fully critically explored. This wellillustrated catalogue raisonné is the first to feature all of his known photograms–nearly 450–in chronological order. This exhaustive volume examines the artistic, technical and biographical circumstances under which the works were created, places them in relation to other parts of László’s practice and analyzes selected pieces at length.

Information From, The Moholy-Nagy Foundation, Inc.

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15. László Moholy-Nagy gelatin silver print photogram 1939

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Conclusion Studying these three pieces produced by artists in the Bauhaus has shown me how influential the artists themselves and the Bauhaus has been on the graphic design of the 20th century.

After my exploration of these pieces, I have seen how unique each piece has been and how revolutionary they were for their time. As you see work being produced today you can often see a clear resemblance between modern day design and what came before during the Bauahaus era.

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16 . László Moholy-Nagy gelatin silver print photogram 1939

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Bibliography

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Electronic Sources Architonic, web The Art Story, web Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, web The Digital One, web MoMA Museum, web My Modern Met, web Alyn Griffiths, 21 November 2018 Dezeen , web The Moholy-Nagy Foundation, Inc, web Tecta, web Jon Astbury, dezeen, web

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Image Sources 01. The Bauhaus Dessau by architect Walter Gropius, 1925-1926 02. Bauhaus Exhibition Poster (1923) 03. Walter Gropius’ , Office in the Bauhaus 04. The Bauhaus Master Houses 05. K raus Glassmakers, Rooftop Advertisement Herbert Bayer (1921–1922) 06. The Lonely Metropolitan, Herbert bayer (1932) 07. Still Life Herbert Bayer, 1936 08 . State Bauhaus in Weimar 1919-1923 (1923), front cover (design by Herbert Bayer) 09 . Herbert Bayer Dessau, Deutschland, alte Kultur, neue Arbeitsstätten 1926 10. A multimedia booth for a fair, Herbert Bayer 1924 11. D esign for a cigarette kiosk, Herbert Bayer 1924 12. A19, Painted by Moholy-Nagy (1927) 13. Stage Set for Tales of Hoffmann, Designed

By Mohly-Nagy (1929) 15. László Moholy-Nagy gelatin silver print photogram 1939 16 . László Moholy-Nagy gelatin silver print photogram 1939

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Published in 2021 Edited by Luke O’Reilly For the Bauhaus Archive Berlin Museum of Design at the institute of Art Design + Technology Kill Avenue, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, Ireland, A96 KH79 Phone: +3531239400 Email: Info@iadt.ie http://www.iadt.ie All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Text & cover design: Luke O’Reilly

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Bauhaus Influencing the future Seeds Of Modernism: the making of the Bauhaus concept, developments in design history 1830 to 1950

By James Volks & Susan Harrison

Bauhaus Archive Berlin Museum of Design Bauhaus Archive Berlin Museum of Design