Page 30 - Studio International - September 1968

the Bauhaus worked with industry. It was a matter of method being Saturday night when fantastic masks and costumes prepared by the
applied to problems that were just then emerging as problems. The theatre group were worn. These dances were held in gaily decorated
Bauhaus influence was enormous. halls and became so popular that many people from Weimar and
The school was a developing institution, and while its organization nearby towns began to attend. The decorations and costumes for
sounds firm, even rigid, it must in fact have been flexible. There were each dance were of a distinctive character with an artistic theme. ...
no precedents for such an undertaking. And the aim was in part to The gaiety and enthusiasm seemed ... to spring from within those
foster the individual talent, to meet its needs. And the staff, collabo- participating and not from any artificial stimulation.'
rators all, were nevertheless artists of independence and strong views. It must have been that the Bauhaus system yielded to the personali-
At various times, there were complaints from the students that the ties of its staff. At one time and another, the Bauhaus staff included
Masters were too much absent from the Workshops—presumably Johannes Itten, Gerhard Marcks, Georg Muche, Oskar Schlemmer,
concentrating on their own creative labours. Paul Klee, Lothar Schreyer, Wassily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger,
For Gropius, 'freedom to design' means the freedom to work within Herbert Bayer, Làszló Moholy-Nagy, Marcel Breuer, Josef Albers, to
a particular context. name some of the most prominent. It is interesting to think of artists
Hirschfeld-Mack describes the spirit of the school's beginnings: 'It such as these producing for the Bauhaus entertainments or cooperat-
was a very mixed crowd at the Bauhaus in the early days, but all ing zestfully in school spirit. On the academic level cooperation must
united in one aim, the seeking of a new way of life, a new architec- have been maintained mainly by non-interference.
ture and new surroundings and a definite negation of all those forces In any case, there were tensions. Itten, who gave the Bauhaus its
which had caused the First World War. Thus every kind of tradition basic course, made physical movement and breathing exercises part
became questionable, not only the traditional way of building houses of the daily routine. There was a mystical element in his approach,
and decorating them, but also education, clothing, food, everyday an intuitiveness, that ran counter to Gropius's precision and ration-
habits, even the manner of greeting each other and so on. alism. Itten departed in 1932, so did Schreyer. As a matter of fact,
`Experiments were made in gardening methods, in developing new Gropius had inherited some staff, who caused trouble almost at
food habits, styles of clothing, forms of dancing and music played on once. Conservative and unsympathetic themselves, they stirred up
unusual home-made instruments. We arranged and developed new suspicion and rumour in the community.
kinds of festivals such as a kite festival when we marched in procession, One might say that the Bauhaus was never out of trouble. It was a
with hundreds of school children through Weimar to the top of a political target for right-wingers; it was short of funds; its emphasis
hill. The Bauhaus band led the procession and all the children carried was altered (much more concentration upon industrial design)
home-made kites. When we reached the hill a competition in kite after the move to Dessau. The Dessau readjustment was profound.
flying was held. Masters, students and children made the kites in As I have mentioned, the staff was reorganized. A new plant had to
various Bauhaus workshops at the beginning of autumn each year. be built (finished in December, 1926). On March 31, 1928 Gropius
Every conceivable shape of kite was made and each was decorated left the Directorship of the Bauhaus and set up in private architectural
with fantastic designs. There were lantern festivals when hundreds of practice in Berlin. Breuer, Bayer, and Moholy-Nagy resigned with
lanterns made in the workshops were carried through the streets at him. The new Director was the Swiss architect, Hannes Meyer, who
night time to the market place. There were dances nearly every introduced leftist politics, fresh grounds for dissension. In 1929,

above, far left Làszló Moholy-Nagy Metal construction 1921-23

above left Josef Albers Fruit bowl 1923

left Josef Albers Tea-glass 1925
above Wilhelm Wagenfeld and K. J. Jucker Table-lamp 1923-24
above right Oskar Schlemmer Design for a clock c. 1923