0:01
Not everybody loved the Bauhaus, at least in it's early years.
This is actually a post card sent by Theo van Doesburg,
who was a Dutch architect and all around artistic trouble maker
who thought that the Bauhaus was in a way too open ended and created and
not really delivering on it's dream to integrate art and
design as fully as it should.
In fact, I think it was things like Oskar Schlemmer's dance performances
that perhaps made van Doesburg think that there were too many fun and games.
Although this famous picture of a group of Dadaists and Constructivists visiting
the Bauhaus in 1922, looks like they were able to have fun at the Bauhaus also,
and have some kind of influence over the direction of the school.
That influence was to, again,
underline the fact that architecture was meant to be the focus of the school.
And there were many interesting projects that came out of that work, and
which effect graphic design in terms of
the way that design was thought of even across all these different practices.
Like this project by Gropius of something called a Construction Kit,
which clearly shows this kind of modular and rationalized way of thinking about
abstract composition with the idea of it ending in an architectural form.
These kinds of very straight forward and
simplified uses of both modularity and
a sort of simple abstract way of composing spaces can be seen
in a lot of the early design from the Bauhaus during this time.
And even in things that are heavily crafted like this wooden chair by Breuer
or this applique project by a student.
Or this rug by Johannes Itten which makes this gorgeous pattern out of
a simple design of straight forward lines either running parallel or
crisscross to create a pattern out of primary colors and grey.
This picture of Gropius's office, I believe this is a recreation of his office
shows a variety of different designs by student and faculty meant to come
together and show this integration of the idea of great formal creativity.
And this issue of the more experimental work and the Utopian directed work at
the Bauhaus versus the things that could actually be realized practically,
was a constant tension during the short life of the school.
2:47
The simple form of this poster by Herbert Bayer,
who first was a Bauhaus student and then a faculty,
shows how radical the push was to simplify form and
to address this issue of connecting design aspects of
the Bauhaus to other modern design going on in Europe,
especially Germany and Russia and places where the constructive style had
sort of set an agenda of simplified form. The Bauhaus going to take set,
I think, and gives it even greater visual power.
This is a picture of the Bauhaus building in construction in Dessau.
And the thing that's so interesting about this building is that you might think,
at first, you were looking at a factory.
3:37
And again, that desire to essentially train artists of
the 20th Century in spaces that were industrial,
spoke to this desire to make that connection.
And it's kind of interesting in a way that the taste I think of,
even contemporary artists,
of working in spaces that maybe were factory lofts, and things like that,
to have a beautiful industrial space [LAUGH] that you have your studio in.
And it connects back to the way the Bauhaus conceived of the appropriate
place of art production in the 20th century.
Louise SandhausFaculty, Program in Graphic Design
Lorraine WildFaculty, Program in Graphic Design
