Bauhaus: The Face of the 20th Century - Violet Larimer

 Bauhaus: The Face of the 20th Century

Summary:

The Bauhaus school, was an art and design school established in Weimar Germany in the early 20th century that, according to the thesis of the documentary, defined and codified the aesthetic and philosophical underpinnings of art and art academia of the 20th century and into the contemporary world.





The Bauhaus School was situated as an Avant Garde model to the established pedagogical and aesthetic ideas of the previously established art academy. Instead of learning a cannon and participating in rote tasks; students would learn the building blocks of art and design as a "grammar to visual language." Paired with the workshop structure of teaching, the school was an obvious break from tradition. On a more philosophical and ideological level, the students and teachers had broken down conventional power relations, with students pursuing personal projects within the school. However, despite the radical break in hierarchical structure, the women students were often relegated to roles and areas of study deemed to be appropriately feminine 

The Bauhaus would relocate to Dessau and later Berlin over the course of its life, and would experience many shifts in the aesthetic philosophies driving the work. From expressionistic, to constructivist, to functionalist, the school would operate under an evolving framework that drove its aesthetic output.

Analysis

The Bauhaus school, can be analyzed in different critical frameworks, and alongside different aspects of the time, as well as its impact on different areas of the contemporary world.

For example, the ways in which Bauhaus outlined a pedagogical framework for art and design academia can be felt today. Despite a wildly different aesthetic and philosophical framework today, the general academic model is still visibly recognizable in modern academia, surviving the radical shifts and breaks of modernist movements, and later postmodernist movements in art.





Another example would be an analysis of class within the school's creative output. While largely contributing to projects created specifically for the working class/proletariat, there was an emphasis of market forces of industrialization that largely played into existing capitalist power structures. (Though, much of this critique can apply to all broadly leftist projects of the early 20th century) Moreover the impact of the visual style the Bauhaus would create, would be largely co-opted by the corporate style of the 1960s and 70s. Now the International Style is synonymous with bland and lifeless corporate identities, a far cry from the radical break from tradition the Bauhaus started.

Ultimately the Bauhaus School was foundational to many of the institutional frameworks within contemporary art and design, and we are still living with the ultimate consequences good and ill.


Bauhaus: The Face of the 20th Century. Directed by Julia Cave, 1994.

Bauhaus Ausstellung, (publisher), Herbert Bayer, (graphic designer). Bauhaus ausstellung: Weimar. 1923. Artstor, library.artstor.org/asset/ACOOPER_10310347520

Gropius, Walter, German, 1883-1969. Bauhaus, Dessau, exterior, workshop wing, view from S.. 1925-1926. Artstor, library.artstor.org/asset/AHSC_ORPHANS_1071314024


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