Page 65 - Studio International - September 1968

This work must have been known by Bayer when he But it is misleading to speak of the Bauhaus as a move-
designed the white festival cards for the Bauhaus, ment. Its real significance is that it was the first school
checks, squares, dots and lines of white on white. It is of its kind. It has had an inerasable effect on art and
also unlikely that the Beard, Heart and Nose festival design education. More than that, in its free eclecticism,
would have been held (cards also designed by Bayer) which it was at great pains to deny, it achieved a
without the publication of Le Coeur Barbe by Tristan synthesis of techniques that was even more important
Tzara in 1922. than its achievement as an academic institution.
The twenties seemed to be a period capable of absorbing
This leads one to briefly consider outside influences anything. Cubism became accepted in poster design
made by the Bauhaus, before and since its closure. It long before it was taken seriously as painting by the
was not the only movement of its kind; it was born out general community. A political poster in Russia, a Dada
of the Secession, and formed part of the Neue Sach- manifesto and a hardware catalogue could all have the
lichkeit and the Esprit Nouveau, it had much in common same interchangeable forms.
with the extremists of Dada and De Stijl, and with a It was a period of transition from the old-fashioned
core of surrealism. traditional idea of printer-typographer craftsman on the
Total design had already been put into practice before one hand, and poster-painter on the other, to the self-
the First World War by Peter Behrens' work for conscious profession of graphic designer. Again, this
AEG, where the design of factory, offices, houses, synthesis could and would have occurred without the
catalogues and publicity were all under unified control. Bauhaus.
The typographic experiments of Constructivists and The Bauhaus contribution to modern Graphic design,
Dada-ists both preceded the Bauhaus. The idea of design a contribution of far reaching importance, is a paradox.
committed to a social idea as carried out by Werkman The Bauhaus set out to reform product design and
and Piet Swart in Holland, Max Bill in Switzerland, the physical environment, a heroic idea which the
would have still happened if the Bauhaus had never workshops never really achieved. Perhaps this
existed. The psychology of type use was exploited to its intention is impossible to realize fully at any one time.
extreme independently in France by Pierre Faucheux. Simultaneously, and unintentionally, indeed
The biggest single post-Bauhaus influence in graphic unconsciously, the Bauhaus, with no academic or
design has not been by its dispersed teachers, but by theoretical policy, brought into being the whole
the work of Herbert Bayer in the United States, who modern synthesis of graphic and typographic
has consistently carried through his constructivist- techniques free from all conception of applied art to
surrealist synthesis into mass marketing without con- first fully realize the total potential of twentieth-
cession or relaxation of standards. century Graphic Design.

Back cover of
a Bauhaus
information
booklet 1929