The Unique Bauhaus Archive Museum of Design in Berlin ~ Was and Is A One Of A Kind Educational Museum ~ Says Our Editor

Written by James Wallenstein Wednesday, 29 February 2012 21:13

The Bauhaus Archive Museum of Design, in Berlin, collects items, documents and literature which relate to the Bauhaus School (1919 - 1933), one of the most influential schools of architecture, design, and art of the 20th century and puts them on public display. The museum features the most complete collection of the school’s history and work. The collection is installed in a building drafted by the famous architect Walter Gropius, the school’s founder. Spanning art forms including fine arts, photography, industrial design, architecture and urban design it was forced to move from provincial Thuringia to Dessau and then to Berlin following threats from the Nazi regime. The entire spectrum of the school´s activities is represented in the Bauhaus Collection: architecture, furniture, ceramics, metalwork, photography, stage pieces and student work from the preliminary course, as well as works created by the school´s famous teachers, including Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Josef Albers, Oskar Schlemmer, László Moholy-Nagy and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Even today, the "Bauhaus Lamp", the "Wassily" armchair, Bauhaus wallpaper and other pieces are regarded as modern classics. This presentation of paintings, drawings, sculptures and models by Bauhaus masters and students from the world´s largest collection of Bauhaus artifacts illustrates its lasting influence. Researchers have access to over 28,000 volumes (books, periodicals, exhibition catalogues) on the history and reception of Bauhaus ideas and activities in the library. The document collection contains manuscripts, letters, printed matter, drawings, plans and photos, as well as the Gropius Estate. The programme of the museum is complemented by at least four special annual exhibitions, numerous lectures, podium discussions, workshops, readings and concerts. The educational and social claim to a new configuration of life and a corresponding environment could not be so easily achieved. The school’s name became a synonym for the ongoing trend. However, changes in the directorship of the school and among teachers, as well as artistic influences from various sources and the political situation in which the school’s experimental work was staged, resulted in a permanent transformation. The Bauhaus began with an utopian definition: "The building of the future" was to combine all the arts in ideal unity. This required a new type of artist beyond academic specialization, for whom the Bauhaus would offer adequate education. In order to reach this goal, the founder, Walter Gropius, saw the necessity to develop new teaching methods and was convinced that the base for any art was to be found in handcraft: "the school will gradually turn into a workshop". Indeed, artists and craftsmen directed classes and production together at the Bauhaus. This was intended to remove any distinction between fine arts and applied arts. The numerous consequences of the experiment flow into contemporary life even today. The Bauhaus was the 20th-century’s emblematic, most important school of design, architecture and art, and has thus left its mark on design to the present day.

The painting "A II" ( above) illustrates how Moholy-Nagy translated his efforts to manipulate light “as a new plastic medium” onto the painted canvas. In the first painting, the colored parallelograms and circles appear to be almost translucent as one plane overlaps the next and their hues shift accordingly. In the second, the intersecting transparent forms read as converging beams of light. A sense of layered space, echoing the artist’s three-dimensional plastic “paintings” constructed with clear, projecting planes, was thus achieved. The contrived play of shadow and illumination on these canvases underscores the artist’s conviction that light could be harnessed as an effective aesthetic medium, “just as color in painting and tone in music.” László Moholy-Nagy’s utopian view that the transformative powers of art could be harnessed for collective social reform—a tenet embedded in much Modernist theory—reflected his early association with a coalition of artists devoted to the fusion of art and political activism. It was also tied to his long-standing affiliation with the Bauhaus, the German artistic and educational community founded by Walter Gropius and dedicated to the development of a universally accessible design vocabulary. With his Bauhaus colleagues, who included Josef Albers, Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Oskar Schlemmer, he strove to define an objective science of essential forms, colors, and materials, the use of which would promote a more unified social environment.Moholy-Nagy firmly believed that the art of the present must parallel contemporary reality in order to successfully communicate meaning to a public surrounded by new technological advancements. Hence, he considered traditional, mimetic painting and sculpture obsolete and turned to pure geometric abstraction filtered through the stylistic influence of Russian Constructivism. Inspired by the structural and formal capacities of modern, synthetic materials, Moholy-Nagy experimented with transparent and opaque plastics, particularly Celluloid, Bakelite, Trolitan, and Plexiglas. In 1923 he created his first painting on clear plastic, giving physical form to his profound interest in the effects of light, which would later be manifest in film and photography as well as in transparent sculptures, such as the kinetic Dual Form with Chromium Rods. Comprehensive shows are organized in parallel to the permanent collection, which occupies the larger part of the exhibition space. These have been devoted to the central Bauhaus artists Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Johannes Itten, Georg Muche and Herbert Bayer, to the Bauhaus architects (Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Hannes Meyer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) and to the specific Bauhaus workshops (pottery, metal, photography, and advertising). 1993 saw a large exhibition on the work of Henry van de Velde. Guest shows (i.e. 1988 in the Bauhaus in Dessau, or 1995 in Tokyo) lead to a better knowledge of the Bauhaus beyond the "homestead"; likewise, important exhibitions (i.e. 1983 the presentation of the Busch-Reisinger-Museum of Harvard University Art Museums, or 1987 the School of Design in Ulm) came to Berlin. The Bauhaus Archive is now not only treating historical themes from the Bauhaus context, but also actual questions concerning contemporary art, architecture and design. In the exhibition ‘From Art to Life : Hungarians at the Bauhaus’, the work of the group is presented as an integral part of Bauhaus history. All of the artistic genres that were practiced by the school are represented. The show includes pieces from the period prior to the Bauhaus years of these artists — particularly Cubo-Expressionist works created by the seven Bauhäusler who came from the southern Hungarian city of Pécs. Other major themes are the early Constructivist phase of Lászlo Moholy-Nagy and Sándor Bortnyik, as well as the furniture of Marcel Breuer and the contribution of the Hungarians to architecture and theatre at the Bauhaus. An individual section is devoted to photography and weaving – whereby the latter category is demonstrated through the work of Otti Berger, the most prominent weaver during the late Bauhaus period.