The Bauhaus Idea and Bauhaus Politics

The Bauhaus Idea and Bauhaus Politics
Author: ?va Forg cs
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 1995-01-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781858660127

Art historian Éva Forgács's book is an unusual take on the Bauhaus. She examines the school as shaped by the great forces of history as well as the personal dynamism of its faculty and students. The book focuses on the idea of the Bauhaus - the notion that the artist should be involved in the technological innovations of mechanization and mass production - rather than on its artefacts. Founded in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius and closed down by the Nazis in 1933, the Bauhaus had to struggle through the years of Weimar Germany not only with its political foes but also with the often-diverging personal ambitions and concepts within its own ranks. It is the inner conflicts and their solutions, the continuous modification of the original Bauhaus idea by politics within and without, that make the history of the school and Forgács's account of it dramatic.

The Bauhaus Idea and Bauhaus Politics

The Bauhaus Idea and Bauhaus Politics
Author: Éva Forgács
Publisher:
Total Pages: 237
Release: 1995
Genre: Architecture and Town Planning
ISBN: 9789637770203

In this highly original book. Hungarian art historian Eva Forgacs examines the development of the Bauhaus school of architecture and applied design by focusing on the idea of the Bauhaus, rather than on its artefacts. What gave this idea its extraordinary powers of survival? Founded in 1919, with the architect Walter Gropius as its first director, the Bauhaus carried within it the seeds of conflict from the start. The duration of the Bauhaus coincides very nearly with that of the Weimar Republic; the Bauhaus idea - the notion that the artist should be involved in the technological innovations of mechanization and mass production - is a concept that was bound to arouse the most passionate feelings. It is these two strands - personal and political - that Forgacs so cleverly interweaves.

Haunted Bauhaus

Haunted Bauhaus
Author: Elizabeth Otto
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-09-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0262043297

An investigation of the irrational and the unconventional currents swirling behind the Bauhaus's signature sleek surfaces and austere structures. The Bauhaus (1919–1933) is widely regarded as the twentieth century's most influential art, architecture, and design school, celebrated as the archetypal movement of rational modernism and famous for bringing functional and elegant design to the masses. In Haunted Bauhaus, art historian Elizabeth Otto liberates Bauhaus history, uncovering a movement that is vastly more diverse and paradoxical than previously assumed. Otto traces the surprising trajectories of the school's engagement with occult spirituality, gender fluidity, queer identities, and radical politics. The Bauhaus, she shows us, is haunted by these untold stories. The Bauhaus is most often associated with a handful of famous artists, architects, and designers—notably Paul Klee, Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Breuer. Otto enlarges this narrow focus by reclaiming the historically marginalized lives and accomplishments of many of the more than 1,200 Bauhaus teachers and students (the so-called Bauhäusler), arguing that they are central to our understanding of this movement. Otto reveals Bauhaus members' spiritual experimentation, expressed in double-exposed “spirit photographs” and enacted in breathing exercises and nude gymnastics; their explorations of the dark sides of masculinity and emerging female identities; the “queer hauntology” of certain Bauhaus works; and the role of radical politics on both the left and the right—during the school's Communist period, when some of the Bauhäusler put their skills to work for the revolution, and, later, into the service of the Nazis. With Haunted Bauhaus, Otto not only expands our knowledge of a foundational movement of modern art, architecture, and design, she also provides the first sustained investigation of the irrational and the unconventional currents swirling behind the Bauhaus's signature sleek surfaces and austere structures. This is a fresh, wild ride through the Bauhaus you thought you knew.

Story of Bauhaus

Story of Bauhaus
Author: Frances Ambler
Publisher: Ilex Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018-11-06
Genre: Design
ISBN: 9781781575970

A lively introduction to the seminal art and design movement that changed the way we see, think and live. Now 100 years old, the Bauhaus still looks just as fresh and new today as it did when it began. It was a place to experiment and embraced a new creative freedom. Thanks to this philosophy, the Bauhaus still shapes the world around us. Trace the Story of Bauhaus through the 100 personalities, designs, ideas and events that shaped this monumental movement. Learn about leaders Paul Klee, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breur and Wassily Kandinsky; witness wild parties and groundbreaking events that would revolutionize

Gropius

Gropius
Author: Fiona MacCarthy
Publisher: Belknap Press
Total Pages: 576
Release: 2019-04-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0674737857

“This is an absolute triumph—ideas, lives, and the dramas of the twentieth century are woven together in a feat of storytelling. A masterpiece.” —Edmund de Waal, ceramic artist and author of The White Road The impact of Walter Gropius can be measured in his buildings—Fagus Factory, Bauhaus Dessau, Pan Am—but no less in his students. I. M. Pei, Paul Rudolph, Anni Albers, Philip Johnson, Fumihiko Maki: countless masters were once disciples at the Bauhaus in Berlin and at Harvard. Between 1910 and 1930, Gropius was at the center of European modernism and avant-garde society glamor, only to be exiled to the antimodernist United Kingdom during the Nazi years. Later, under the democratizing influence of American universities, Gropius became an advocate of public art and cemented a starring role in twentieth-century architecture and design. Fiona MacCarthy challenges the image of Gropius as a doctrinaire architectural rationalist, bringing out the visionary philosophy and courage that carried him through a politically hostile age. Pilloried by Tom Wolfe as inventor of the monolithic high-rise, Gropius is better remembered as inventor of a form of art education that influenced schools worldwide. He viewed argument as intrinsic to creativity. Unusually for one in his position, Gropius encouraged women’s artistic endeavors and sought equal romantic partners. Though a traveler in elite circles, he objected to the cloistering of beauty as “a special privilege for the aesthetically initiated.” Gropius offers a poignant and personal story—and a fascinating reexamination of the urges that drove European and American modernism.

Before the Bauhaus

Before the Bauhaus
Author: John V. Maciuika
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2005-05-05
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780521790048

Publisher Description

Bauhaus Futures

Bauhaus Futures
Author: Laura Forlano
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2019-10-22
Genre: Design
ISBN: 0262042916

Essays, photo-essays, interviews, manifestos, diagrams, and a play explore the varied legacies, influences, and futures of the Bauhaus. What would keep the Bauhaus up at night if it were practicing today? A century after its founding by Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany, as an “experimental laboratory of the future,” who are the pioneering experimentalists who reinscribe or resist Bauhaus traditions? This book explores the varied legacies, influences, and futures of the Bauhaus. Many of the animating issues of the Bauhaus—its integration of research, teaching, and practice; its experimentation with materials; its democratization of design; its open-minded, heterogeneous approach to ideas, theories, methods, and styles—remain relevant. The contributors to Bauhaus Futures address these but go further, considering issues that design has largely ignored for the last hundred years: gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and disability. Their contributions take the form of essays, photo-essays, interviews, manifestos, diagrams, and even a play. They discuss, among other things, the Bauhaus curriculum and its contemporary offshoots; Bauhaus legacies at the MIT Media Lab, Black Mountain College, and elsewhere; the conflict between the Bauhaus ideal of humanist universalism and current approaches to design concerned with race and justice; designed objects, from the iconic to the precarious; textile and weaving work by women in the Bauhaus and the present day; and design and technology. Contributors Alice Arnold, Jeffrey Bardzell, Shaowen Bardzell, Karen Kornblum Berntsen, Marshall Brown, Stuart Candy, Jessica Charlesworth, Elizabeth J. Chin, Taeyoon Choi, B. Coleman, Carl DiSalvo, Michael J. Golec, Kate Hennessy, Matthew Hockenberry, Joi Ito, Denisa Kera, N. Adriana Knouf, Silvia Lindtner, Shannon Mattern, Ramia Mazé, V. Mitch McEwen, Oliver Neumann, Paul Pangaro, Tim Parsons, Nassim Parvin, Joanne Pouzenc, Luiza Prado de O. Martin, Daniela K. Rosner, Natalie Saltiel, Trudi Lynn Smith, Carol Strohecker, Alex Taylor, Martin Thaler, Fred Turner, Andre Uhl, Jeff Watson, Robert Wiesenberger

Inside the Bauhaus

Inside the Bauhaus
Author: Howard Dearstyne
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2014-05-16
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1483135748

Inside the Bauhaus presents the story of an idea about how people might live. It is also the story of a school, the Bauhaus, whose life span coincided with the Weimar Republic's and whose history mirrors German history between the two world wars. Through mass-production, the Bauhaus, like the German Werkbund, hoped to change the quality of the designed object and the designed environment for everyone. Quality of life was an important design consideration in the housing schemes developed by Walter Gropius and Hannes Meyer, respectively the first and second directors of the school, and Ludwig Hilberseimer, whose teaching responsibilities at the Bauhaus included the planning curriculum. Howard Dearstyne, the author of the present work, was one of a handful of Americans to study at the Bauhaus and the only one to earn a diploma in architecture. His account of life and education at the Bauhaus is drawn chiefly from contemporary sources, from his letters, from journals and letters kept by members of the Bauhaus faculty, from newspaper articles, and from the recollections of others. Dearstyne also includes historical background of the structure of the curriculum of the Bauhaus as well as discussions of the various workshops and how they functioned prior to his admission to the school.