39. Bauhaus, the “International Style” (1919-1933)
What was it about? What were the goals?
Mostly, when we talk about “schools” of art, we mean a group of artist friends with a guiding philosophy and common aesthetic, often with one or two leaders. Staatliches Bauhaus was an actual school, starting in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, under the leadership of architect Walter Gropius - and it's story feels like something from a Wes Anderson film, I'm surprised he hasn't made it yet. It lasted until 1933 when the Nazi party disbanded it. (There is a Goth band named Bauhaus (starting in 1978), but it’s completely unrelated.) The word Bauhaus literally means “build house” in German.
The aim of the school was to merge a fine arts academy with departments in architecture and other trade crafts. Gropius said, “Art itself cannot be taught, but craftsmanship can. Architects, painters, and sculptors are all craftsmen in the original sense of the word.” His goal was, “to create a new guild of craftsmen, without the class distinctions which raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist." To do this, he created a unified theory of art, aesthetics, and design – a common set of principles for evaluating all kinds of art, from high to low – the same set of principles and design elements still commonly taught today in art schools around the world. Gropius aimed to raise craft to a higher art form, eschewing decoration in favor of a new design aesthetic where an object’s function was streamlined and emphasized, rather than hidden. The school also merged traditional notions of craftsmanship with mass production and modern technology and materials. This new approach to craft made Bauhaus a pioneering endeavor in the new field of industrial design. Gropius explained, "we want an architecture adapted to our world of machines, radios and fast cars."
One irony of this disdain of decoration - their most profitable designs were wall papers. In fact, if you Google them today, you'll find it very hard to distinguish their original designs with new works inspired by them, still for sale a hundred years later.
A bit of historical context:
The Bauhaus school began after WWI when the conservative old regime in Germany fell. A wave of liberalism allowed free thinkers to take in new ideas from other countries, and to form new schools, groups, and associations. The goals and philosophy of the Bauhaus school were not entirely new – there had been a Deutscher Werkbund, or designer’s organization, started in 1907 in Germany to help debate and foster new ideas. WWI can best be seen, then, as a pause in this progress, which the Bauhaus school picked up and carried on.
In addition to their core faculty, the Bauhaus also invited guest teachers, including Theo van Doesburg and El Lissitzky. Although its founder, Gropius, and his successor, Hannes Meyer, strove to keep his school apolitical, it was soon viewed as a hotbed for leftist agitators. In 1924 the increasingly conservative government in Weimar cut the Bauhaus’s funding in half, so the school split, with its more prominent members choosing a new location in Dessau, which started offering courses in 1925.
At this point Hannes Meyer was director, and he became controversial for firing several long-time and popular professors.
In 1930, Meyer was himself fired, by the mayor of Dessau. The city council urged Gropius to return, but he instead suggested Mies van der Rohe, who took the job. Mies personally interviewed each student, and dismissed the ones he didn’t like, and pushed the school in a new direction.
After just one year, the Nazi party took control of the Dessau city council, and voted to close the school. Mies moved the Bauhaus to Berlin. This lasted for 10 months before the Gestapo (German secret police for the Nazi party) closed it. Mies protested the decision, but was ultimately unsuccessful. The Nazi party denounced the Bauhaus movement as degenerate, subversive, communist, and Jewish.
The closing of the school led to an exodus of professors and students, and even a “New Bauhaus” school opening in Chicago (with Moholy-Nagy directing). Many of these designers moved to Israel, where they designed over 4,000 Bauhaus buildings in Tel Aviv, known as “The White City”.
Gropius and Breuer taught for many years at the Harvard Grad. School of Design, where they taught I.M. Pei, Philip Johnson, and many other famous architects. Today, the Bauhaus style and approach to design is ubiquitous, and all those towns that closed their schools: Weimar, Dessau, and Berlin, all celebrate the movement with museums and foundations. In 2020 the EU began a New European Bauhaus initiative to incorporate a Green New Deal into design and architecture – to make buildings more efficient and sustainable.
It should be noted that Russia introduced a larger school, quite similar in nature, a year after the Bauhaus opened, called the Vkhutemas, hiring artists like Malevich, Rodchenko, and others to teach there. That lasted until 1930 when Stalin closed it, using much the same language as the Nazis. Yet another school modelled after the Bauhaus was founded in Budapest in 1928 by Sándor Bortnyik. He named the school Műhely, but it was known as the Hungarian Bauhaus.
The underlying philosophy of the period:
Walter Gropius followed the teachings of William Morris (1834-1896), a British designer who argued that design should meet the needs of society, and that form should follow function. In addition, Gropius and his partner Adolf Meyer both worked for Peter Behrens, an industrial designer who taught them to bring an artistic spirit into mass production, as well as how to incorporate new modern materials such as steel and concrete into their designs.
How was it represented in the other arts – music, architecture, and literature?
Since this was a design philosophy it was used extensively in applied arts and crafts, particularly in architecture, furniture, interior, and industrial design. Phyllis Shillito firmly believed that "A student who has mastered the basic principles of design, can design anything from a dress to a kitchen stove"
Was it great?
Bauhaus buildings were very controversial at the time, and some people still complain that they look ugly and plain. Most of us don’t necessarily see these works as being Bauhaus, but just everyday office buildings, with a bunch of square windows and concrete, and no decoration. I think certain works reach an impressive level of elegance, and I appreciate that a lot of thought and consideration went into redefining common objects like ceramics, carpets, furniture, and so on. I think it’s fair to say certain designs were great, and it’s not simply a matter of taste. To say it’s greater than previous architectural movements is problematic, and I’d have to think a lot more about it.
Some leading figures:
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
Peter Behrens (1868-1940)
Paul Klee (1879-1940)
Adolf Meyer (1881-1929)
Walter Gropius (1883-1969)
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969)
Johannes Itten (1888-1967) (He resigned in 1923 and was replaced by Moholy-Nagy)
Hannes Meyer (1889-1954)
Joseph Albers (1888-1976)
Sándor Bortnyik (1893-1976) (founder of the Hungarian off-shoot of the Bauhaus)
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946)
Marcel Breuer (1902-1981)
Some of the most famous artworks of the time:
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