The Bauhaus : A New Unity, Between Art And Technology

The first decades of the 20th century in modernism was characterised by enormous social and political changes with a radically changing lifestyle. Technology, manufacturing, science and art was the driving force. The Bauhaus movement was one of the most influential modern design movements of the 20th century reaching its peak between the two world wars. It was founded in 1919 in the city of Weimar in Germany by architect Walter Gropius. Although the Bauhaus was founded by an architect, it did not actually have architecture department during its early years. Instead, Gropius wanted to focus on a study of art that would eventually encompass many different aspects of design, and tying them all together. The word Bauhaus

About 1909 the implications of Cézanne's highly organized yet revolutionary spatial structures were expanded by Picasso and Braque, who invented an abstract art of still lives converted into shifting volumes and planes. Cubism, developed by the artists of the school of Paris, went through several stages and had an enormous influence on European and American painting and sculpture. In sculpture its notable exponents included Picasso, Duchamp-Villon, Lipchitz, González, and Archipenko, who began to realize the possibilities of convex and concave volumes. Cubism was absorbed in Italy by the exponents of futurism and in Germany by the Blaue Reiter group; both these movements were cut short by the advent of World War I. Fauvism and cubism were introduced by members of the Eight to a generally shocked American audience in

These clear, slick, and streamlined creations emphasize the parallel of natural beauty—industrial beauty, the magnificence of efficient, high functioning modernist art. Its element lies in prosperous mass production in the ageless advancing industry focused on efficiency, emphasizing and harmonizing with the repetitive drive for achievement displayed by Douglas. The combination of his juxtaposition with Gorges du Loup provides conceptual progression from the imagery of nature to the artistic appeal of mass production, adding sense in subtle connections in an exhibit riddled with countless different

According to article “Graphic Incognito”, writer Mark Owens says that modernism exported to America through Bauhaus, which was a European movement that came around World War 2. The movement in America took shape in the 1980s with the influence of a new cultural era that was personified in different mediums, especially in music. He argues that certain modernist design tactics were adopted by suburban kids raised during the Reagan era in the early 1980s that were in the post- punk, hardcore, underground music scene. First of all, he begins his essay with a quote from Paul Rand about how “timeless principles” were the only hope to achieve a style of quality in one’s work.

Gropius, inspired from the constitutive beliefs of the arts and craft movement, had a utopian dream to combine art, design and the industry of architecture in ideal unity. Hence the Bauhaus movement was founded on collaboration of all different art forms. Instructors such as Paul Klee, Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky and László Moholy-Nagy each specialized in their own field of designs and craftsmanship. With these artists shaping the Bauhaus movement, the style and the elements that came along with it are immortalized even today. Walter Gropius’ form-follows-function philosophy still influences every aspect of art including advertising, typography, architecture, and people’s living spaces. The Bauhaus expressed an

The Arts and Craft movement was a social and artistic movement, which began in Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century and continued into the twentieth spreading to continental Europe and the USA. Its adherents-artists, architects, designers and Craftsmen sought to reassert the importance of and craftsmanship in all arts in the face of increasing industrialization, which they felt was sacrificing quality in the pursuit of quantity. Its supporters and practioners were united not so much by a style rather than the common goal- a desire to break down the hierarchy of the arts and to revive traditional handicrafts and make art that could be affordable to all.

Marshall Berman’s take on modernity is presented in his book All That Is Solid Melts into Air whereby he focuses on its issues and the cultural attitudes and philosophies towards the modern condition. In doing so he shares his experiences of modernity post WWII in New York in the height of an economic boom and then more specifically of his childhood neighbourhood, the Bronx. In addition to expanded austerity, industrial and architectural development, the end of WWII proved to be a key period in world history and by extension the history of art. A talented group of artists emerged in result that had been influenced by an influx of established European artist who had fled to New York to escape fascist regimes in their homelands. More importantly these artists produced art that was at the heart of maelstrom Berman describes in regards to his experience of modernity. I aim to highlight the correlation between Berman’s experience of modernity and the emergence of a new American modernism. Modernity throughout this period was broken into two different compartments, hermetically sealed off from one another: "modernisation" in economics and politics, "modernism" in art, culture and sensibility. It’s through the lens of this dualism in which we recognise that both Berman and these artists try to make sense of the world around them by making their individual expressions that would re-conceptualise what it is to be modern in the twentieth century.

Out of the destruction and cultural upheavals this new medium of expression was formed. It was this new approach to art and manifestation that influenced the creation of countless outpourings of emotions following and during the two world wars. Of these artistic developments individual artists emerged to gain recognition out of the underground and young Dadaism movement, such an artist was Karl Schwitters. His constant desire to discover an ideal medium for his art may indeed have come from his feeling of lack of place. Although the original creations of the Merzbau are no longer in existence for further education and observance, his reputation and remaining works are a testament to his incredible fascination with the ‘new’ and his unabashed courage to pursue art using mediums previously unexplored by the artistic mainstream. These artistic processes will no doubt continue to affect and influence bourgeoning and further

Lloyd’s chapter, “The Brücke Studios: A Testing Ground for Primitivism”, in her book, German Expressionism: Primitivism and Modernity, discusses the influence of Primitivism artefacts used as decorative items and their cultural influence on the studios of the die Brücke movement. Lloyd asserts in her writings, that the work of the die Brücke were inspired by the primitivizing, bohemian interior design fashioned by the artists inside their individual studios. The non-European art that attracted the Brücke artists’ attention first of all—the Palau beams and Ajanta temple paintings—were in both cases related to decorative environments, and thus relevant for their own studio spaces, rather than random or arbitrary stylistic models . Shortly thereafter, Lloyd contradicts her earlier statements when she states the studios in the Friederichstadt neighborhood of Dresden that the Brücke artists’ shared were in a working-class neighborhood, agreeing with other art historians’ claims that the reason it was chosen was because it appealed to their anti-bourgeois sensibilities. Further reading exposes what I believe Lloyd was really trying to tell her audience, although the Brücke artists were antibourgeois, they were decorating their studios in a bourgeois, bohemian style to give their work, of how they thought, a worldly, and thusly, a more educated artist would decorate their atelier. Lloyd supports this when she supports Bleyl as he describes Kirchner’s studio in the fall of 1907. Bleyl’s memoirs, although not completely reliable with regard to dating, support this theory as he suggests that there were no decorations in Kirchner’s atelier when he left die Brücke in the autumn of 1907, but that when they met again the was decorated in a very bohemian style. Lloyd shares with us that although these Brücke artists were using Primitivism to influence their style, the underlying factor was because it was what they were currently exposed to with the rest of the population during the German colonization of Africa. Lloyd explains they were almost unwitting imposters as they were not well-educated, having never traveled farther than Dresden or Berlin. Her comments about Kirchner supports his antibourgeois attitudes, but his

[The Bauhaus Reassessed] What unique about the Bauhaus is the fact that its ideologies epitomize changing concepts concerning the nature and purpose of design in the early twentieth century. The art inherited reinterpreted and then rejected the

In the brief history of Bauhaus, regardless of whether it was good or bad, anyway, it really led to a revolution in the field of art education, we still can feel its impact. Now, every student in an art school is grateful to the Bauhaus for their own "basic courses" in school. Each art school has been able to teach students materials, color theory and three-dimensional design of the content, are more or less thanks to about 60 years ago in Germany that education experiment. Ordinary people sitting in steel-framed chairs, using adjustable tables, or in some or all of their residential buildings, are using prefabricated components that benefit (or be involved) in the design of the Bauhaus The great revolution. In the words of Wolf vor Eckardt, Bauhaus "created the model of today 's industrial design and set the standard for it; it is the midwife of modern architecture; it changes everything, from what you are sitting right now Chair, until you are reading the book.

“Design is for living”. The adage fashioned a widespread shift in design during the 1940s and 1950s. It revolutionized the form by creating an electrifying visual language that signaled a new age and a fresh start- two of the powerhouses were Charles and Ray Eames. The Eameses were a husband and wife team whose unique synergy led to a whole new expression in furniture and architecture. The couple advocated the principles of Modernism through the adaptation of innova¬tion from wartime technology .Their design style can be branded as “California Modernism,” a term that is often used interchangeably with “Mid-Century Modernism.” This distinct style embodied an approach to design that opposed the “social conscience” of the Bauhaus in order to embrace looser, warmer design which was both more expressive of local character and in touch with the realities of commerce and salesmanship. With the west-coast coming-of-age, economy shift from making goods to producing information and the global expansion of American culture; their lives and work embodied some of America’s defining movements. They contributed to architecture, film, industrial and graphic design. They were known as pioneers of affordable mass production and residential constructions. The evolution from furniture designers to cultural ambassadors validated their bents and overlaps with country’s interest and projected how design can enhance the lives and practical needs of ordinary people and not just the elite.

The Bauhaus school was founded in 1919 in Weimar by German architect Walter Gropius (1883 - 1969). In 1923, Walter Gropius introduced the agreement between “creative artists and the industrial world”. The Bauhaus is most famous for the idea of combining forms and functions. They combined both fine arts and design elements to create a curriculum that trained artists and designers to be capable of producing both functional and aesthetic work. One of the main goals was to bring design and technology together. During the Bauhaus period, Fine art and craft were combined together and aimed toward problem solving for an innovative, modern and industrial society. Nowadays, the Bauhaus legacy continues in modern designs, such as minimalism, or design brands like IKEA. In this essay, I will analyze Bauhaus’s influence on modern design, including architecture and furniture design by exploring different examples from different periods of time.

The Bauhaus is one of the most prestigious colleges of fine arts, as founded in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius. Although it is closed in the last century, its influence is still showed in today’s design industries now and will continue to spread its principle to designers and artists. Even, it has a thoughtful influence upon later developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design and fashion design as well. Bauhaus focused on creating art by artists without a class system, free of economical fixes, craftsmen in the Bauhaus school could make art for the masses: fine crafted, plain designs and beautiful technique, this viewpoint bread cash out of the strongly obsessional, dedicated artists that honored the ‘total

The Bauhaus was created by Walter Gropius in the city of Weimar. He was a German architect