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For many artists, architects, and historians, the Bauhaus is a symbol of modernism and artistic ingenuity.
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However, to the vast majority of people, the Bauhaus seems like a rather peculiar and short-lived German art school. Honestly, both views are accurate.
Let's take a closer look at the Bauhaus in this video. If you'd like to see more design videos, be sure to give us a like and tell us which topics you want to learn about next.
During its heyday, the Bauhaus was a cradle of modern design. The founder of the school was modernist architect Walter Gropius. On the one hand, he had created an entirely new type of school with the Bauhaus, where students could be turned into masters. On the other, he helped to turn the Bauhaus into a kind of free-for-all experimental laboratory.
The school always had a unique atmosphere as Gropius's dream of a community of designers, apprentices, and craftsmen became a reality. The school grew into a kind of commune. People from different backgrounds all lived in close proximity to one another. They worked together, partied together, and shared ideas with one another.
As a result, many people viewed the school as a kind of secular cult or even a sect. For example, one of the main masters of the school, Johannes Itten, had a magnetic effect on the students. His supporters were primarily concerned with physical and spiritual cleansing. They saw their path to self-knowledge and meditation in it.
They believed that in order to remove the veil of the false world and see the truth, it was necessary to prepare the body with the help of vegetarianism, exercise, fasting, and enemas. At one point, the students of Itten carried out their ritualistic body cleansing in the city fountain of Weimar, which led to conflicts with the city administration.
As a result, Walter Gropius relieved Itten from his post in 1923, forcing him to leave the school for good. It was not the only master who acted as both an artist and a prophet. Many of the school's teachers held complex philosophical views and sometimes unwittingly bewitched their students.
In addition to its philosophical and political effects, the Bauhaus was notorious for its outrageous parties. Gropius supported the idea that theater shows, lectures, poetry, music, and costume parties should all be part of the training program. In his opinion, rest and relaxation were no less important for creative thinking than work.
Oscar Schlemmer, who had held the position of head of the theater workshop since 1923, offered an answer for the peculiar holidays. He believed that play was the power that made creativity possible. Schlemmer used parties as an experimental stage for his workshop.
The most famous product of the workshop was the Triadic Ballet, where the structure of the human body was destroyed with the help of complex volumetric geometric costumes, turning a human into a puppet. The Bauhaus parties never lost their moments of madness, but when the school moved to Dessau, the parties took on an increasingly professional tone.
Despite its bizarre and challenging reputation, the Bauhaus fundamentally changed the world of design, especially when it came to furniture. In the 14 years of its existence, the school's students created many legendary designs. One of the most famous products created at the school was a basil chair by Marcel Lajos Breuer.
This chair was very much liked by Wassily Kandinsky. Decades later, when Breuer relaunched the mass production of these chairs in Italy in the 1960s, he paid tribute to the artist and renamed the chair Vasily.
The most famous example of female creativity at the Bauhaus came from Marianne Brandt in her legendary teapot. At its core, the teapot was made to be functional. This spout prevents the drops from rolling down, while the wooden handle was heat resistant.
That said, Brandt didn't forget to make it aesthetically pleasing. In fact, Brandt liked her original design so much that she made several versions of the product from different materials: tonback alloy, silver, and nickel-plated silver.
Walter Gropius's dream was that, as in the Middle Ages, architecture would be the final product of the synthesis of arts. At the first major Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar in 1923, a group of students—George Muche, Gunthe, Daiso, Alma Siedhoff-Buscher, and Marcel Breuer—built the Haus am Horn as a reflection of a new way of life.
To show the versatility of his project, Gropius even shot a promotional video about what a modernist lifestyle should look like. The main architectural project of the Bauhaus was the school building itself in Dessau, designed by Walter Gropius. It was an ode to the functionalism and machine aesthetics of the 20th century.
The building also served as an advertisement for goods produced under the Bauhaus patent.
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Sadly, all good things must come to an end. The Bauhaus went through three different stages: Weimar, Dessau, and Berlin. During this time, the school had three directors: Walter Gropius, Hans Meyer, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. None of these phases were easy, but Mies van der Rohe's years were the most difficult by far.
In 1930, the school had to be temporarily closed, and the dissenters disbanded. Students protested the closure in the center of the Nazi Party, but this only delayed the inevitable. Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, and in the early morning of April 11, 1933, the school was closed by the police.
Those who did not have proper documentation were taken away in trucks. Despite permission from the authorities to reopen the school with some changes in August of that year, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe notified everyone that the school was permanently closing due to the difficult economic situation.
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Modern art and design might be completely different if not for the Bauhaus school. Even though it had a short and tumultuous history, the Bauhaus had a tremendous impact on both art and mass production in the 20th century.
To this day, reflections of the Bauhaus's products and vision can be seen in products and art pieces around the world.
What do you find most interesting about the story of the Bauhaus? Can you think of any other art schools that can compare to it? If so, feel free to comment below.
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