The Bauhaus - Lecture 6 - 25-10-11

The Bauhaus was a German school of art and design. It was born 1919 and was forced to close in 1933 by the Nazis. Walter Gropius (one of the school's Architectural Directors and founder of the school) said in the Bauhaus' manifesto, "The ultimate aim of all creative activity is a building." The Bauhaus strived to bring together all discipline's of art and design under one roof, a concept that might seem lost to some people nowadays. Unlike the North Wales School of Art and Design, where all art students are together under one roof, a lot of universities/colleges/institutions don't have a separate building for art and design department etc.

Some of the key figures of the Bauhaus were:
Anni and Josef Albers, Herbert Beyer, Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Lilly Reich, Oskar Schlemmer, Gunta Stolzl.

Gustav Stolzl

Josef Albers

Anni Josef

Work model for the memorial model of the marching heroes, 1921

"Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilised society."

Walter Gropius

Herbert Beyer designed a typeface that consisted entirely of lowercase letters. It was called "Universal." (Seen in the opposite (left) picture).

I know some people don't like using capital letters, but I really can't write and type like this. I don't know why, but when I write/type, I have to have capital letters.

The Bauhaus did not have professors, but masters, for example, form masters, work masters, and young masters. The most talented Bauhaus students, were nominated young masters and were supported by the school.

Out of all these young masters, there was only one female, Gunta Stolzl. Weaving has been designated as a woman's area, and only for this reason did it appear legitimate for a woman to be in charge.

The Bauhaus manifesto was written by Walter Gropius, and the key points made in it included:
"The old art schools were unable to produce this unity; and how, indeed, should they have done so since art cannot be taught?"
and
"Let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen without the class distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artists."
I do agree to an extent with this aspect of their manifesto, that we shouldn't have such rigid barriers, but I do believe we do need some barriers to associate what part of art and design we are, and what we do.

Overall, I believe the Bauhaus was an incredibly important part of where and how design has got to be where it is today. The figures that the Bauhaus has given us is astounding; even if you can't relate to their work, or can't understand, you can appreciate that these were the very first visions of design as we know it today. Without the Bauhaus, art schools etc would not have principles which they base their teaching and school on.