Space — 1920–1940

From the Bauhaus in Germany to the New Bauhaus in Chicago

Space

The Bauhaus emerges in its first incarnation the year prior to the Roaring Twenties, with Germany facing stark economic challenges resulting from WWI. The language of craft and spirituality was used to guide its first years. The mechanistic horrors of the war took several years to fade from memory and for the Bauhaus of new materials to evolve. Form and space — line and plane — became a central consideration in the creation of art, architecture, communications, and objects. The avant-garde challenged societal norms. The new curriculum of Moholy-Nagy intended to educate designers in the modernization of craft emerged in 1922 based upon considerations of shape, color, texture, and mechanical craft. This program was largely replicated throughout the Twentieth Century beginning with the New Bauhaus in 1937. Sensitivity to the world and society was a new approach to design that powered the ever growing consumer economy.

Model of the Tower for the Third International, by Vladimir Tatlin (1919)

Assignments for the Class

Readings & Assignments

The readings for the week include:

ASSIGNED READING: Moholy-Nagy's Design Pedagogy in Chicago (1937-46), Alain Findeli, Design Issues, MIT Press (Autumn 1990)

Add a key point or two to the Mural board
Add a relevant question raised by the topic
Review the Class 2 website page

SUPPLEMENTAL READING (scan): Vision in Motion, Introduction & Chapter 1, Moholy-Nagy, Paul Theobald & Co (1947)
OPTIONAL MEDIA: The New Bauhaus, 2019 (OpenDox)

Assignments for the week are as follows:

HISTORICAL PRODUCT PORTFOLIO: Locate a relevant and impactful product from the period we are discussing (1920-1940). Discuss:
- Why does the product exist and what needs were met?
- Why is the product important?
- Who did the product empower/disempower?
- What behaviors did the product change or create?
METHODS TOOLKIT: Create a light modulator:
- Get a sheet of paper
- Follow the directions on the attached sheet
- Photograph the resulting object using your phone paying attention to the shadows
- Adjust the color and contrast of the photo
- Voila (my example is on the class 5 web page)

Goals for the Class

Students will be able to articulate how and why the Bauhaus program of education evolved with the leadership of László Moholy-Nagy. They will be able to articulate how the New Bauhaus extended the conversation to including sciences as well as the implications of technology. Students will appreciate the impacts of art on the culture of design. They will be able to describe how the Frankfurt Kitchen and similar design ideas were intended to support new priorities for women in society.

The Waste of War

“There are no humane methods of warfare, there is no such thing as civilized warfare; all warfare is inhuman, all warfare is barbaric; the first blast of the bugles of war ever sounds for the time being the funeral knell of human progress…”

James Connolly

The Context

Germany faced harsh reparations as a consequence of the Treaty of Versailles. The country was devastated as a result of the war and faced economic and financial crises. The Weimar Republic was established in 1919 with the electoral history of the Social Democrats. Despite challenges such as hyperinflation, Germany experienced a cultural renaissance. Its economic expansion came to a halt in 1929 with the Great Depression. The Weimar Republic ended with Hitler’s chancellorship in 1933.
Million Mark note being used as scratch paper. (credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-00193 / CC-BY-SA 3.0)

The wealthiest countries in Western Europe along with the United States continued to grow at a rate beyond the rest of the world. As noted on the source website, “Prosperity is a very recent achievement that distinguishes the last 10 or 20 generations from all of their ancestors.” And, prosperity was unevenly spread around the globe. We will discuss this inequality in future classes. (sources: Our World in Data)

The Werkbund and the Arbeitsrat

The Deutscher Werkbund continued to espouse the integration of craft with industrial processes. Members of the group, including Walter Gropius, appear to have been impacted by the war and subsequently advocated for a return to craft traditions. The goal of the Arbeitsrat für Kunst was to establish the artist as the architect of a new world.
*“From now on the artist, as shaper of the sensibilities of the people, is alone responsible for the external appearance of the new nation.”*
Similar thoughts can be seen in the Bauhaus Manifesto written by Gropius in 1919. The dialog regarding art, craft, and manufacturing resulted in the evolution of ideas surrounding the education of designers. This conversation evolved by 1923 with László Moholy-Nagy assuming responsibility for the Preliminary Course.
Image Left: Walter Gropius © via Wikimedia License Under Public Domain
Images above: Study in Balance, Johannes Zabel (photo: Lucia Moholy, 1923–1924); Light-Space Modulator, László Moholy-Nagy, 1922-1930, replica 1970 (Bauhaus Kooperation)

The Preliminary Course (1922)

Moholy’s Bauhaus

The beginnings of the Bauhaus in 1919 were quite different after Gropius began returning to his industrial roots in 1922. He saw the need to begin history anew with a design and architecture influenced by the machine age. Johannes Itten resignation in 1922 brought Moholy-Nagy to the foundation program.
“Itten was replaced by the Hungarian designer László Moholy-Nagy, who rewrote the *Vorkurs* with a leaning towards the New Objectivity favoured by Gropius, which was analogous in some ways to the applied arts side of the debate. Although this shift was an important one, it did not represent a radical break from the past so much as a small step in a broader, more gradual socio-economic movement that had been going on at least since 1907, when van de Velde had argued for a craft basis for design while Hermann Muthesius had begun implementing industrial prototypes.”
The Weimar Bauhaus was forced to close in 1924. The city of Dessau funded the building of a new Bauhaus school, which was completed in 1926. Adolf Sommerfeld provided financial support so that the Bauhaus could establish a company to sell products created at the school. Breuer’s Wassily Chair was not created in the Bauhaus workshops and was sold through a company that he established. Industrial cooperation steadily increased during Gropius’ tenure.
Image: Mechanical Stage Design by Joost Schmidt, 1925 (Wikipedia)
Images below: Woman wearing an Oskar Schlemmer mask seated on Marcel Breuer’s B3 chair, 1926 (Bauhaus-Archiv), Bauhaus Signet

Thoughts to Consider
Consider the changes in teaching at the Bauhaus.

Study in Balance, Johannes Zabel, photo: Lucia Moholy, 1923–1924

The Socialist Individual

Lenin and the Bolshevik Party seized power in 1917 but continued to fight a civil war until 1921. Propaganda continued to serve the purpose of educating a largely illiterate populace about socialism and its enemies. The struggle between realism and abstraction largely represented the differences between the less literate and the intelligentsia. Artists explored new visual languages to communicate the opportunity of building a new world based upon revolutionary ideals. Kazimir Malevich and El Lissitzky created equally revolutionary art and books. The ideas regarding the individual’s — and the artist’s — place in society were highly influential in Europe and the world. These ideas can be seen in Bauhaus publications.
Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1920

Constructivism

The Fine Art Department (IZO) was Russia’s effort to “prepare artists for work in industry (V. Margolin). An active conversation regarding the nature of art and the artists role in society resulted in Constructivism. This new conception of form and space resulted in stark, powerful imagery. Constructivism also brought new thinking to the forms of architecture including the use of lines, planes, cantilevers, and motion. Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International represents this perspective well. Ideas of a socialist society spread through Europe and were highly influential in other movements and schools of art.
The cover of *Konstruktivizm* by Aleksei Gan, 1922

Wagenfeld Lamp.jpeg — The Constructivist Influence

In 1923, Moholy-Nagy and Josef Albers divided the new Preliminary Course and introduced a focus on simplified forms and materials. Craft was still considered, although designing objects for the home environment became central. Students designed useful objects including utensils and lighting to be produced using industrial manufacturing processes. Industrial design became a possibility within the craft tradition.
Table Lamp (1923-24), Wilhelm Wagenfeld, Carl Jacob

The Avant-Garde

Artists in Germany and Switzerland reacted to the horrors of war by satirizing politics and those who were felt to have contributed to this tragedy. The aim of Dada was “to destroy traditional values on art.” In contrast with Socialist and Constructivist ideals of building a new individual and way of living, Dadaists critiqued the politics of the day.
Photomontage existed as a photo-mechanical process since the 1850s. John Heartfield and George Grosz experimented with ways of reconstructing meaning using combinations of word and image. Photomontage is one of the most influential artistic methods of the Twentieth Century.

Books!.jpeg — Thoughts to Consider
Consider how politics shaped design discourse.

Books! poster by Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova (1924)

The New Objectivity

*Neue Sachlichkeit*, or New Objectivity, was a rational approach to form in design. Standardized forms were used to ensure that objects could be manufactured using industrial production. Questions of designed objects also included considerations of manufacturing efficiency and standardized forms. The German Standards Board published a set of standards — German Industrial Standards of DIN — intended to ensure that products were manufactured using consistent processes and measures.
Sintrax Coffee Machine (1925), Gerhard Marcks, Wilhelm Wagenfeld

The House of Tomorrow was designed by George Fred Keck for the 1933 Century of Progress World’s Fair in Chicago. “The project, designed by George Fred Keck for the 1933 Century of Progress World’s Fair in Chicago, was decades ahead of its time. As well as featuring new-fangled gadgets, such as a dishwasher and an ‘iceless’ refrigerator, the House of Tomorrow also represented an early manifestation of harnessing solar energy.” (Source: Wallpaper)