BAUHAUS 100. The philosophy of total happiness

/ Architecture /

Exactly one hundred years ago, the German architect Walter Gropius opened the legendary Bauhaus school in Weimar. It existed for only 14 years, it had a colossal influence on the development of design and architecture throughout the XNUMXth century. Her ideas and radical approach continue to excite creative minds today. We publish the first of a series of articles about this unique phenomenon, which has set itself the goal of building a happy future for everyone.

Decadence of the beginning of the XNUMXth century. suddenly replaced by inspiring positive moods, when it seemed to humanity that it was about to find an answer to an important question: what should architecture be in the era of global industrialization and technological progress, and most importantly, how does a person live in this new paradigm? Gropius was confident that he knew the answers.

Walter Gropius, German architect, founder and director of the Bauhaus school

Like any revolutionary movement, Bauhaus began with a manifesto. "We want to jointly invent and create a new building of the future, where everything will merge into a single image: architecture, sculpture, painting, a building that, like temples raised to the sky by the hands of craftsmen, will become a crystal symbol of the new, coming faith," he declared in 1919. the founder and main ideologist of the school Walter Gropius. He saw the construction of the building as the physical embodiment of the conceptual context as the highest act of any artistic, creative process. Therefore, the name of the school means "construction house" in German.

Bauhaus Higher School of Construction and Artistic Design is the official name of the institution

Walter Gropius

According to Gropius, it is the unity of architecture, painting, urban planning and social disciplines that will give birth to a new constructive thinking, giving the opportunity to create a Gesamtkunstwerk — "a great universal work of art." He managed to gather like-minded people around him - the most talented people of his time, who shared his views. Famous artists, sculptors, designers, representatives of the world artistic avant-garde taught at the Bauhaus: Lionel Feininger and Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Laszlo Mohoy-Nagy, Lothar Schreyer and Oskar Schlemmer, Gerhard Marx and Adolf Meyer, Johannes Itten and Josef Albers.

The glass facade of the main building of the Bauhaus school in Dessau, architect Walter Gropius,
1925-1926 Photo: Tadashi Okochi © Pen Magazine, 2010, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau

At the same time, the main principles of Bauhaus were formed: the form is determined by the function, and "every object must fulfill its purpose to the end, that is, fulfill its practical functions, be convenient, inexpensive and beautiful", simple and functional design that can be replicated, a synthesis of architecture , art and industry. It is easy to notice that they resonate with the key postulates of modernism voiced by Le Corbusier, and it is not surprising: Gropius and the last, the third director of the Mies van der Rohe school, started together in the workshop of Peter Behrens and were greatly influenced by Corbusier's architectural views.

Bauhaus school teachers: Joseph Albers, Hinnerk Scheper, Georg Muche, László Mohoy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, Just Schmidt, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lionel Feininger, Gunta Stelzl, Oskar Schlemmer. Photo: Getty Images

Simple geometric shapes of structures, flat roofs, open layout, complete rejection of architectural decorative elements and order system - in this the Bauhaus architects were in solidarity with their modernist colleagues. At the same time, in their school, they seriously studied the influence of shapes, colors, and materials on human psychophysics. It was expected that the emergence of new art and new progressive architecture would lead to grandiose social transformations, which would eventually give birth to a new personality and allow building a happy future for all of humanity.

The synthesis of architecture, art and industry became the main principle of the Bauhaus philosophical doctrine

It was thanks to the Bauhaus that the concept of "affordable housing" that we know today was formed. Hence the interest in mass typical construction. And so that the word does not diverge from practice, Gropius built the Dessau-Törten residential quarter in Dessau from 314 white houses with a separate garden next to each one. He was convinced that high standards of living should be available to all sections of the population and defended and developed his ideology of total social good, for which he was repeatedly criticized and even accused by leftists.

Student dormitory of the Bauhaus school in Dessau, architect Walter Gropius, 1925-1926.
Photo: Erich Consemüller, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau

In 1925, the Weimar authorities stopped subsidizing the school, and it had to move to Dessau, in a new building built according to Gropius's design, which became the embodiment of the very style and ideology of the Bauhaus. It represented a single complex with classrooms, craft workshops, dining rooms, and teachers' offices. Students lived all together right there in a multi-story tower dormitory, and teachers lived in separately designed houses. Interiors, furniture, household items and even fabric design were developed by teachers and students independently, in the spirit of Bauhaus and in the three main colors of the spectrum.

A unique creative atmosphere reigned in the Bauhaus school. She is credited with the emergence of a new type of student — a freedom-loving rebel artist who disregards generally accepted norms and challenges society. Some rooms were easily transformed: the partition was removed, and the dining room turned into a dance floor. Theatrical performances took place there: every week, students together with teachers organized parties, marched with red flags, publicly painted statues of Goethe and Schiller. Girls cut their hair short, boys, on the contrary, grew their hair. Eyewitnesses recall that residents of Dessau complained about provocative clothing, night swimming and noisy parties, and mothers warned their daughters when students passed by: "Don't look, they're from the Bauhaus!".

Each item must fully meet its purpose, that is, perform practical functions, be convenient, inexpensive and beautiful

School education consisted of three stages. In the preparatory, or basic course, students were given basic knowledge about colors, shapes, textures of materials, and their psychophysical effects. The eccentric Swiss artist Johannes Itten was the first to lead it. He, for example, wore a robe similar to a monk's robe, and began his lectures with meditation and breathing exercises. Instead of copying the works of great masters, he taught students to think and study their talent, their own creative possibilities. He also divided his course into three key blocks: study of the nature of color and materials, analysis of works of art, and drawing.

Pendant lamp, prototype, designed and manufactured by Alfred Schefter, 1931-1932. Photo: Gunter Binsack, 2018, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau

Teapot designed by Marianne Brandt, brass, silver, ebony, 1924.

In 1923, the preparatory course was headed by the Hungarian artist and art theorist Laszlo Mohoy-Nagy. He, on the contrary, focused on technology without bypassing art. In his metal workshop, where students worked on the creation of modern metal lamps, the range of creative disciplines was very wide and comprehensive: photography, drawing, object design, photomontage, kinetic sculpture. He found painting no longer relevant, and was the main apologist for industrialization and only welcomed the transition from manual labor to machine labor.

A fragment of the vintage version of the Red Blue Chair designed by Gerrit Rietveld, produced by the Cassina factory. The author developed the original in 1918, and his color "format" appeared in 1923 under the influence of Piet Mondrian

After the preparatory course, the students moved on to the practical stage — work in workshops led by famous professors. It was a course in metalworking, graphics, sculpture, ceramics, wood, glass, photography, textiles, wall painting, and advertising was even taught here. Wassily Kandinsky, for example, managed a workshop of painting and frescoes, and Paul Klee - of window painting. The well-known Soviet avant-garde artist, architect and artist El Lysitsky introduced Bauhaus students to the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich. Many objects, which are now perceived by us as something ordinary, came out of these workshops. For example, Wilhelm Wagenfeld's table lamp (Bauhaus Lamp) or Joseph Albers' fruit vase and Marianne Brandt's teapot made of silver-plated brass with an ebony handle on a cross-shaped base, or her square table-alarm clock. And if we continue about Kandinsky, then Marcel Breuer, who played a key role in the establishment of the school, dedicated to him his legendary chair B 3 Wassily, in which for the first time tubular steel was used to create a piece of furniture.

Baby cradle, designed by Peter Keler, 1922. Photo: Jan Keler

The legendary B3 Wassily chair, designed by Marcel Breuer, 1925.

A special phenomenon in the history of the school is the theater workshop under the direction of the artist Oscar Schlemmer. At the first Bauhaus exhibition in 1923, organized in the house Haus am Horn, designed by Georg Muche and Adolf Meyer, he presented his "Triadic Ballet", combining dance, music, author's sculptural costumes and pantomime. The costumes and masks created by Schlemmer became a symbolic part of the Bauhaus identity, and students often staged theatrical performances with their participation, organized costume parties and were often photographed in them. By the way, for the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus, a number of posters were reissued, where female students of the school pose in them on the famous Bauhaus tubular chairs.

Costume designed by the German artist Oskar Schlemmer for the Triadic Ballet, 1922.

In 1928, Gropius gave the management to the architect Hannes Meyer. The founder himself in every way cultivated apoliticalness in the school he created, while the more rigid and principled Meyer was a supporter of communist ideas and openly expressed his position, which put the Bauhaus under threat of closure. And when he went on an expedition to the USSR in 1930, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe took his place. In 1931, the school moved to Berlin, and in 1933, after the Nazis came to power, it ceased to exist. The Cape fought to the last, but it turned out to be impossible to come to an agreement with the new regime.

Color, form, materials were studied here, including from the point of view of their psychophysical impact on a person

Many see this as a classic illustration of the struggle between good and evil, in which the latter still won. From the very moment Gropius published his Bauhaus Manifesto, decorated with Lionel Feininger's engraving "The Cathedral", depicting a burning cathedral with stars on the spires, which was immediately called "socialist", the authorities of the Weimar Republic closely followed both the author himself and his activities school, which seemed to him fertile ground for radicals of various persuasions. At the same time, it was financed by the left wing of the government, many teachers invited from abroad had a dubious past in the eyes of those in power.

Wassily Kandinsky. "Yellow-red-blue", canvas, oil, 1925

The same Kandinsky, for example, cooperated with Bolshevik organizations in the USSR, even if the artist left the country, the statute of Soviet authoritarianism. The ideological inspirer of the Bauhaus was himself an internationalist and utopian. He even created, unfortunately, the not-preserved "Monument to the Fallen in March" in the form of a lightning bolt, which in 1922 was installed on the grave of workers killed during the suppression of the Kappovsky Putsch.

Architecture and art in Bauhaus ideology served as an instrument capable of building a new, happy future

The largest concentration of Bauhaus architecture — more than 4 (!) houses — is in White City in the center of Tel Aviv. The photo shows one of the residential buildings designed by the Israeli architect Ben-Ama Shulman

At the same time, he was a hero of the German war, a miracle survivor of all the horrors of the front. And although he was a member of radical organizations such as Novembergruppe and Arbeitsrat für Kunst, he tried to influence some issues with restraint, preferring to achieve his conscious social progressivism through design rather than politics; not by agitating, but by creating housing for workers and safe, clean workplaces filled, according to Corby, with light and air (for example, the Fagus factory). "Let's create a new guild of masters without class distinctions, raising an insurmountable barrier of arrogance between the master and the artist," he urged. In the cycle of utopian correspondence between the German expressionist architects Crystal Chain, he wrote under the pseudonym Maß, which means "balance", and Gropius always strived for this quality in his work.

Building of the Bauhaus-Archive Museum in Berlin. View from the southeast. Closed for reconstruction until 2022, but a temporary exhibition is in effect. Photo: Tillmann Franzen

After its closure, the school building was abandoned, and its students scattered all over the world, and it seemed that the bright future dreamed of by Gropius had finally collapsed. But they, carrying with them to each new place the revolutionary ideas and principles that they adopted from their mentors, managed to revive the Bauhaus spirit, no matter how loud it sounded. Often they themselves later became teachers, like Brandt and Breuer, and no matter where they were in the world, with their architectural projects, object design, and art, they sowed the seeds of the philosophy of building a new happy world, which attracts us so much today.

 

/Published in #10 volume Pragmatika, April 2019/