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Bauhaus Construct: Fashioning Identity, Discourse and Modernism
Reconsidering the status and meaning of Bauhaus objects in relation to the multiple re-tellings of the school s history, this volume positions art objects of the Bauhaus within the theoretical, artistic, historical, and cultural concerns in which they were produced and received.
Contributions from leading scholars writing in the field today including Frederic J. Schwartz, Magdalena Droste, and Alina Payne offer an entirely new treatment of the Bauhaus. Issues such as art and design pedagogy, the practice of photography, copyright law, and critical theory are discussed. Through a strong thematic structure, new archival research and innovative methodologies, the questions and subsequent conclusions presented here re-examine the history of the Bauhaus and its continuing legacy. Essential reading for anyone studying the Bauhaus, modern art and design.
Contributions from leading scholars writing in the field today including Frederic J. Schwartz, Magdalena Droste, and Alina Payne offer an entirely new treatment of the Bauhaus. Issues such as art and design pedagogy, the practice of photography, copyright law, and critical theory are discussed. Through a strong thematic structure, new archival research and innovative methodologies, the questions and subsequent conclusions presented here re-examine the history of the Bauhaus and its continuing legacy. Essential reading for anyone studying the Bauhaus, modern art and design.
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288 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
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May 24, 2023
Introduction – Jeffrey Saletnik and Robin Schuldenfrei, pp.1-9
p.1 – Among the dozens of photographs taken by Lucia Moholy of the Bauhaus school building, masters’ houses, few are as thought-provoking and evocative as her photographs of a typewriter on a desk in Walter and Ise Gropius’ Dessau living room [1926].
p.2 – Other photographs admirably capture work and life at the school: straightforward documentary images of the Bauhaus […]; photographs of the school’s interior and living quarters, with custom-designed fixtures and furnishings; and straightforward sachlich (objective) images of Bauhaus products set against plain backgrounds, such as Marcel Breuer’s chairs and Josef Hartwig’s chess set.
Unlike the subjects of her other photographs, this typewriter was not, of course, produced at the Bauhaus. Rather, Moholy depicts an object that, in a sense, produced the Bauhaus. With this and other typewriters, much of the institutional history of the Bauhaus came into being. It was an industrious object, a means for communicating and asserting expertise.
The construction of the Bauhaus as concept is akin to a palimpsest, having been repeatedly and at times strategically erased and rewritten. […] Its legacy reveals changing attitudes about art-making, pedagogy, production, and authorship.
p.3 – Lucia Moholy’s photograph which has the typewriter as its object is a reminder of the importance of writing and theoretical discussions at the Bauhaus. It gestures towards the idea that discourse was a primary focus of Bauhaus work. Typewriting, as a symbolic system and means for the communication of authority, can be seen as a crucial tool for conveying the ideas and larger project that the Bauhaus represented. Waves of written public relations campaigns were launched, especially in times of crisis – the archives are replete with letters to key cultural and political figures as the school was forced into survival mode time and time again.
Chapter 10 – The Bauhaus Object between Authorship and Anonymity – Magdalena Droste, pp.205-225
p.205 – On 17 October 1924 a group of seventeen Bauhaus students wrote a letter of protest to Walter Gropius, claiming that Bauhaus designs should not be published under the label “Bauhaus,” as Gropius and the council of masters (Meisterrat) had decided, but rather under their authors’ names. This document has not attracted much attention in the studies on the Bauhaus until now, and is very useful to discussions concerning authorship and anonymity at the Bauhaus; it facilitates a reading of Bauhaus objects as oscillating between being part of the identity of the school and an artist’s individual work.
p.206 – The student protest was part of an ongoing conflict among more advanced Bauhaus students: one defending the principles of authorship, stressing the position of the artist as an individual creator, and the other supporting Gropius’ desire for anonymity. […] following the debate Gropius had helped develop at the Werkbund prior to WWI and which he had taken up again as director of the Bauhaus. The Werkbund debate centered upon two opposing views regarding the production of design: one stressed the importance of developing type-forms for the marketplace, the other the primary role of the artist. Gropius’ position in the debate would seem to integrate elements of both concerns: he desired type-forms and urged that they be designed by artists. Yet Gropius wanted the artist to be modest, open to cooperative work, and lacking individual ego.
p.207 – Gropius wanted his Bauhaus students to work as craftsmen and later as technicians and, moreover, to learn to work cooperatively.
Gropius’ decision to reject the artist’s right to autonomy and authorship was also motivated by financial concerns in that he desired to establish a commercial company. The initials GmbH (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, the equivalent to a limited-liability company) were printed on the cover of the Katalog der Muster so as to strengthen the Bauhaus’ economic power and make it independent of public funding; indeed, the Katalog der Muster was his first endeavour to announce the sale of Bauhaus works in Dessau. In the school’s 1926-27 estimated budget, Gropius predicted high revenues resulting from the sale of Bauhaus-owned designs, as well as from student fees. The school’s statutes also helped Gropius maintain the anonymity of Bauhaus designs. They explicitly stated: “All work produced with Bauhaus materials remains the property of the Bauhaus.”
p.208 – Gropius’ separation between authorship and anonymity drew upon the legal aspects of copyright as well; students did not hold the rights to their work produced at the Bauhaus, yet the Masters retained rights to their work.
Thos whose names appeared firs in the 1924 protest letter were Erich Dieckmann and Marcel Breuer, both of whom had been hired and paid as advanced journeymen, a special status between a student and a Master at the Bauhaus. Dieckmann and Breuer argued that they were too old and too gifted to be treated as mere pupils and wanted to be responsible for their creations, as were the Masters. Like student work, a journeyman’s output was subsumed by the Bauhaus.
p.210 – In April 1925 Breuer became Junior Master of the carpentry workshop in Dessau. Subsequently, he continually fought to link his designs with his name and to develop an artistic personality. His appointment as Junior Master confirmed that Breuer had attained an exceptional degree of technical and design competence, but it also meant that he was an ideal “Bauhaus artist,” having assimilated the “unity of art and technology” that Gropius desired.
Breuer’s desire for autonomy is further exemplified by the conflict that arose concerning the rights to the tubular steel furniture he had developed at the Bauhaus between 1925 and 1926. Gropius intended to arrange license agreements for the manufacture of the furniture and use the income generated thereby for the school. Opposed to this plan, Breuer argued that his designs were comparable to the paintings of the older Masters and that they were his private possession.
p.211 – In September 1926 Breuer secured design protection (Gebrauchsmusterschutz) in Germany and a patent in France for these inventions, and in the same year he founded a company to produce his furniture with the Hungarian industrialist Kálmán Lengyel. The actions not only secured Breuer’s claim to authorship but also reflected aspects of the new artist’s habitus: orientation towards the market, productive work, and the integration of art into everyday life. So as to retain Breuer at the Bauhaus, Gropius consented to these activities. But ultimately Breuer decided to leave the school, breaking his contract in January 1928, when it became obvious that Hannes Meyer was to be appointed as the new Bauhaus director.
p.215 – Where Breuer and Bayer began their careers as junior Masters in April 1925, Marianne Brandt had just finished her second semester in the metal workshop.
p.216 – Whereas Breuer and Bayer had used publications to promote themselves, in 1928 Brandt was publicly attached by avant-garde sculptor Naum Gabo in a five-column article in the journal Bauhaus, in which he accused the metal workshop of not doing functional work, but of working in a “Stil” or in a stylish way. Brandt answered Gabo’s attack with a very short article, claiming that her work was based on scientific research. […] Given the documents of the time, it seems that Hannes Meyer himself had approved Gabo’s attack.
She had been confronted by her colleagues Hin Bredendieck and Hermann Gautel, who were interested in developing metal furniture and declared Brandt unable to do so, even telling her that they would not mind if she were to leave the workshop. Brandt was not supported by Meyer; in fact, he rearranged the workshops so as to accommodate the desired of Bredendieck and Gautel immediately after she left the Bauhaus when her contract expired.
She had lost the struggle for power by giving up direction of the metal workshop, after having also lost symbolic authority when attacked publicly by Gabo.
In contrast to Breuer and Bayer, she neither published in journals nor did she assert a professional identity after leaving the Bauhaus. […] Her work for the Ruppel factory in the small town of Gotha from the end of 1929 through 1932 was anonymous. And her job there was to redesign their existing line of metal products such as boxes for stamps, clocks, and napkin holders. As an artist she was almost invisible.
p.217 – Like Breuer and Bayer, Brandt held legal authorship of her Bauhaus work, excluding the lamps. In 1932, she asked the Bauhaus to return the negative metal mold press used to make her bowls, and proposed that some of her metal designs be produced by Swiss Wohnbedarf AG. But her attempts for economic success failed just as the Bauhaus itself struggled to maintain its existence and economic conditions worsened.
p.1 – Among the dozens of photographs taken by Lucia Moholy of the Bauhaus school building, masters’ houses, few are as thought-provoking and evocative as her photographs of a typewriter on a desk in Walter and Ise Gropius’ Dessau living room [1926].
p.2 – Other photographs admirably capture work and life at the school: straightforward documentary images of the Bauhaus […]; photographs of the school’s interior and living quarters, with custom-designed fixtures and furnishings; and straightforward sachlich (objective) images of Bauhaus products set against plain backgrounds, such as Marcel Breuer’s chairs and Josef Hartwig’s chess set.
Unlike the subjects of her other photographs, this typewriter was not, of course, produced at the Bauhaus. Rather, Moholy depicts an object that, in a sense, produced the Bauhaus. With this and other typewriters, much of the institutional history of the Bauhaus came into being. It was an industrious object, a means for communicating and asserting expertise.
The construction of the Bauhaus as concept is akin to a palimpsest, having been repeatedly and at times strategically erased and rewritten. […] Its legacy reveals changing attitudes about art-making, pedagogy, production, and authorship.
p.3 – Lucia Moholy’s photograph which has the typewriter as its object is a reminder of the importance of writing and theoretical discussions at the Bauhaus. It gestures towards the idea that discourse was a primary focus of Bauhaus work. Typewriting, as a symbolic system and means for the communication of authority, can be seen as a crucial tool for conveying the ideas and larger project that the Bauhaus represented. Waves of written public relations campaigns were launched, especially in times of crisis – the archives are replete with letters to key cultural and political figures as the school was forced into survival mode time and time again.
Chapter 10 – The Bauhaus Object between Authorship and Anonymity – Magdalena Droste, pp.205-225
p.205 – On 17 October 1924 a group of seventeen Bauhaus students wrote a letter of protest to Walter Gropius, claiming that Bauhaus designs should not be published under the label “Bauhaus,” as Gropius and the council of masters (Meisterrat) had decided, but rather under their authors’ names. This document has not attracted much attention in the studies on the Bauhaus until now, and is very useful to discussions concerning authorship and anonymity at the Bauhaus; it facilitates a reading of Bauhaus objects as oscillating between being part of the identity of the school and an artist’s individual work.
p.206 – The student protest was part of an ongoing conflict among more advanced Bauhaus students: one defending the principles of authorship, stressing the position of the artist as an individual creator, and the other supporting Gropius’ desire for anonymity. […] following the debate Gropius had helped develop at the Werkbund prior to WWI and which he had taken up again as director of the Bauhaus. The Werkbund debate centered upon two opposing views regarding the production of design: one stressed the importance of developing type-forms for the marketplace, the other the primary role of the artist. Gropius’ position in the debate would seem to integrate elements of both concerns: he desired type-forms and urged that they be designed by artists. Yet Gropius wanted the artist to be modest, open to cooperative work, and lacking individual ego.
p.207 – Gropius wanted his Bauhaus students to work as craftsmen and later as technicians and, moreover, to learn to work cooperatively.
Gropius’ decision to reject the artist’s right to autonomy and authorship was also motivated by financial concerns in that he desired to establish a commercial company. The initials GmbH (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, the equivalent to a limited-liability company) were printed on the cover of the Katalog der Muster so as to strengthen the Bauhaus’ economic power and make it independent of public funding; indeed, the Katalog der Muster was his first endeavour to announce the sale of Bauhaus works in Dessau. In the school’s 1926-27 estimated budget, Gropius predicted high revenues resulting from the sale of Bauhaus-owned designs, as well as from student fees. The school’s statutes also helped Gropius maintain the anonymity of Bauhaus designs. They explicitly stated: “All work produced with Bauhaus materials remains the property of the Bauhaus.”
p.208 – Gropius’ separation between authorship and anonymity drew upon the legal aspects of copyright as well; students did not hold the rights to their work produced at the Bauhaus, yet the Masters retained rights to their work.
Thos whose names appeared firs in the 1924 protest letter were Erich Dieckmann and Marcel Breuer, both of whom had been hired and paid as advanced journeymen, a special status between a student and a Master at the Bauhaus. Dieckmann and Breuer argued that they were too old and too gifted to be treated as mere pupils and wanted to be responsible for their creations, as were the Masters. Like student work, a journeyman’s output was subsumed by the Bauhaus.
p.210 – In April 1925 Breuer became Junior Master of the carpentry workshop in Dessau. Subsequently, he continually fought to link his designs with his name and to develop an artistic personality. His appointment as Junior Master confirmed that Breuer had attained an exceptional degree of technical and design competence, but it also meant that he was an ideal “Bauhaus artist,” having assimilated the “unity of art and technology” that Gropius desired.
Breuer’s desire for autonomy is further exemplified by the conflict that arose concerning the rights to the tubular steel furniture he had developed at the Bauhaus between 1925 and 1926. Gropius intended to arrange license agreements for the manufacture of the furniture and use the income generated thereby for the school. Opposed to this plan, Breuer argued that his designs were comparable to the paintings of the older Masters and that they were his private possession.
p.211 – In September 1926 Breuer secured design protection (Gebrauchsmusterschutz) in Germany and a patent in France for these inventions, and in the same year he founded a company to produce his furniture with the Hungarian industrialist Kálmán Lengyel. The actions not only secured Breuer’s claim to authorship but also reflected aspects of the new artist’s habitus: orientation towards the market, productive work, and the integration of art into everyday life. So as to retain Breuer at the Bauhaus, Gropius consented to these activities. But ultimately Breuer decided to leave the school, breaking his contract in January 1928, when it became obvious that Hannes Meyer was to be appointed as the new Bauhaus director.
p.215 – Where Breuer and Bayer began their careers as junior Masters in April 1925, Marianne Brandt had just finished her second semester in the metal workshop.
p.216 – Whereas Breuer and Bayer had used publications to promote themselves, in 1928 Brandt was publicly attached by avant-garde sculptor Naum Gabo in a five-column article in the journal Bauhaus, in which he accused the metal workshop of not doing functional work, but of working in a “Stil” or in a stylish way. Brandt answered Gabo’s attack with a very short article, claiming that her work was based on scientific research. […] Given the documents of the time, it seems that Hannes Meyer himself had approved Gabo’s attack.
She had been confronted by her colleagues Hin Bredendieck and Hermann Gautel, who were interested in developing metal furniture and declared Brandt unable to do so, even telling her that they would not mind if she were to leave the workshop. Brandt was not supported by Meyer; in fact, he rearranged the workshops so as to accommodate the desired of Bredendieck and Gautel immediately after she left the Bauhaus when her contract expired.
She had lost the struggle for power by giving up direction of the metal workshop, after having also lost symbolic authority when attacked publicly by Gabo.
In contrast to Breuer and Bayer, she neither published in journals nor did she assert a professional identity after leaving the Bauhaus. […] Her work for the Ruppel factory in the small town of Gotha from the end of 1929 through 1932 was anonymous. And her job there was to redesign their existing line of metal products such as boxes for stamps, clocks, and napkin holders. As an artist she was almost invisible.
p.217 – Like Breuer and Bayer, Brandt held legal authorship of her Bauhaus work, excluding the lamps. In 1932, she asked the Bauhaus to return the negative metal mold press used to make her bowls, and proposed that some of her metal designs be produced by Swiss Wohnbedarf AG. But her attempts for economic success failed just as the Bauhaus itself struggled to maintain its existence and economic conditions worsened.
January 7, 2012
This edited collection was a ripper. It was a fine collection of theorizations of the Bauhaus. The writers moved far beyond the conventional narrative, to explore authorship, authenticity, copyright, politics and social change. There is also a strong and powerful understanding of the ambiguous legacy of the Bauhaus, particularly in relation to the mastery of form.
All chapters are outstanding. Jeffrey Saletnik's investigation of "Pedagogic Objects" is particularly noteworthy. But this book is an intellectual necessity for all scholars investigating the Bauhaus.
All chapters are outstanding. Jeffrey Saletnik's investigation of "Pedagogic Objects" is particularly noteworthy. But this book is an intellectual necessity for all scholars investigating the Bauhaus.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews