The Bauhaus Of Bauhaus School

Though the start of the modernisation may trace back to the beginning of Industrial Revolution. “Modernism in the design world did not exist in a fully developed form, until well after First World War.” (Wilk, 2006) Causing the great loss of lives and other countless damage to the world, it reshaped many people’s way of thinking the world. With the inspiration of early avant-garde movement, the modernism began to emerge advocating an utopian future and shared certain core principles by various styles of modernists: rejecting the past and applied ornament; forms follow function, a preference for

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

The Bauhaus was established in Weimar in 1919, with the architect Walter Gropius as its founder and first director (Harrison and Wood 1993, p. 338). The school was founded on Gropius’s principle of the importance of combining and unifying all the artistic and technical realms; a separation, which had been to the detriment of existing art schooling (Girard 2003, p. 6-­‐7). Gropius wanted to combine art and technology or “culture and civilisation” (Droste 2012, p. 15). The Bauhaus consisted of workshops with two distinct instructors, a “craft master” who was a

The Bauhaus was an art school formed in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius in Germany. Bauhaus art movement took place between the two world wars. Bauhaus literal meaning is ‘house of construction’. Before Bauhaus craft and design were taught separately in the European art schools but in Bauhaus combined craft, design and technology to build products. It was a revolutionary movement because before Bauhaus products were made in a small scale and by the used of hands, but Bauhaus was all about mass production, catering to a large number of people and making furniture which are highly functional.

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

Both during and after this period of pop and consumerist development, a change in designoccurred. The American design profession was developed in the late 1920s when people realised that

Kepes was a designer, theorist and Bauhaus enthusiast who became Bass’s mentor when the two met in 1944. Kepes had been teaching in Brooklyn at the time, after emigrating to the United States from Hungary in 1937. Bauhaus, something Kepes firmly believed in, was based on one idea: “to reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of all the arts.” (Griffith Winton, “The Bauhaus, 1919–1933”). This movement was all about how art impacted our society. Kepes helped to pass on these ideas to Bass, including his modernist style and the social responsibility of artists. (monoskop.org,"György Kepes") (Griffith Winton, “The Bauhaus, 1919–1933”) (Horak,

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.

To fully appreciate the differences and similarities between Postmodernism and Modernism, it is required to understand exactly what they are. Modernism is the term we give to the accumulated creations and activities of designers in the early 20th century, who had the theory that traditional forms of literature, religion, social organization, and most of all, art and architecture, had become outdated in the new social, political, and economic environment of a fully industrialised world. One of the main characteristics of Modernism is self-consciousness, which typically caused exstensive experimentations of form and function. The creative process of generating work was also explored, forming new techniques in design. Modernism rejected all ideology of realism and prefers to reference and parody works of the past. Postmodernism, on the other hand, is a radical rejection of Modernist design. Taking place in the late 20th century, it is a movement in art, criticism, and architecture that disputes the majority of modernist tendencies. The Postmodernist analysis of society and culture lead to the expansion of critical theory and advanced the works of architecture, literature, and design. This entire re-evaluation of the western value system of popular culture, love, marriage, economy, that took place from the 1950s and 60s, leading to the peak of the Social Revolution in 1968, is commonly referred as Postmodernity which influenced postmodern thought, as opposed to the term

Although the Bauhaus abandoned much of the ethos of the old academic tradition of fine art education, it maintained a stress on intellectual and theoretical pursuits, and linked these to an emphasis on practical skills, crafts and techniques that was more reminiscent of the medieval guild system. Fine art and craft were brought together with the goal of problem solving for a modern industrial society. In so doing, the Bauhaus effectively leveled the old hierarchy of the arts, placing crafts on par with fine arts such as sculpture and painting, and paving the way for many of the ideas that have inspired artists in the late 20th century.

A reflection of the International Style and the Bauhaus movement, Mid-Century architecture was typically used residentially in the hope of bringing Modernism into the post-war suburbs.

[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

Le Corbusier’s manifesto ‘vers un architecture’ (Towards an architecture) seemingly focuses on promoting the excellence of the machine. Corbusier quotes. ‘A house is a machine for living in’ explaining that the main principle for architects should be to create a house as well suited to its purpose as you would a machine. It also reinforced the opinion that it is better for something to be functional (functionalism) than have a good appearance. During the writing, Corbusier promotes the strong idea that there are parallels between architects and engineers and argues that engineers should be praised for their use of geometry and mathematics. The start of the writing focuses purely on this factor and explains how architects should adopt this

“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.