Page 58 - Studio International - September 1968

The Bauhaus—Graphic Design

Bernard Myers

Lionel The Modern Movement in art, architecture and design—
Feininger of which the Bauhaus was an integral part—is mainly
Woodcut from interpreted by critics as the visual manifestation of a
the first general reaction against the nineteenth century and its
proclamation values. The nineteenth century is seen as brutal, dark,
1919 dirty, complex and hypocritical; the twentieth as
enlightened, bright, clean, clear, simple and realistic.
This view is alright as long as one is only concerned with
aesthetics, with form rather than ideas. The formal
interpretation looks clear enough; from the turn of the
century onwards a general clean-up of the man-made
environment has begun to be generally considered a
good thing.
But in fact the idea of the Modern Movement lies firmly
embedded in nineteenth century philosophy. It is an
Below idea that links Gropius and the Bauhaus to William
Anonymous Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement. It has a
Festival common origin in the thought processes and accumulated
Programme
analysis that culminated in the work of Charles Darwin,
1920
of Marx and of Freud. That the worlds of the living
organism, of the human society, and of the mind and
imagination are no longer mysterious and elemental,
but are logical consequences of interdependent actions
capable of analysis. If capable of analysis, then of
synthesis also, and therefore by resynthesis capable of
change. For change read improvement, and improve-
ment by control, and by control to design.
Thus in its simplest form the basic idea behind the
Modern Movement may be expressed, that by design
the environment may be changed for the better, and by
redesigning the environment one can redesign society.
By building, one can build a new society; by design,
one can design the new man.
This idea, which had its origins in Bentham and Owen, in
Godwin and the 'Builder', in Muthesius' housing report
for the Prussian Government and in the Garden City
ideal of Ebenezer Howard, unites opposites which are
irreconcilable on formal and aesthetic grounds, the style
machiniste of the Bauhaus and the cranky quaintness of
the Arts and Crafts Movement.
It was this fundamental reformist spirit that underlay
the Bauhaus idea, not a formal experiment to make
machine-made products more socially acceptable. The
right-wing critics were right to accuse the Bauhaus of
social revolution, however much as a body it claimed to
be a-political. The Bauhaus, students and staff, really
believed that they were designing a new world.
It is against this background of the Bauhaus idea that
the Bauhaus products must be examined, its teaching