Bauhaus and Modernism - Essay Example

Bauhaus as the Beginning of Modernism In just about any town today, it is possible for a man to climb out of a shining metal vehicle after spending hours moving box by box through the traffic on the multi-columned roadway. He may look up toward the sky, but he will only see towering metal and glass rectangles looming over him, perhaps reflecting from above the glorious light of the unseen sun. If he is fortunate, he will have the advantage of a small, square blue rectangle directly above from which he can determine the probable weather for the next hour. It is possible to imagine him, at this point, shaking his head slightly, as if he wants to rid himself of the rigid angles surrounding him. Perhaps feeling a bit overwhelmed, he walks up the concrete street and finally enters the square glass doors of one of the skyscrapers. In the humming windowless hallway leading to his office, he stops in front of a metal box full of chilled metal cylinders. He inserts several polished silver disks into a slot and pushes one of the glowing square buttons to receive a modern marvel of preserved mass-produced liquid. Entering his office, he settles back into a tubular metal chair and grabs one of the antiquated but comforting newspapers waiting on a nearby projection of the wall that serves him as a desk. As he sips his drink and scans the headlines, an article draws his eye because it is contained within a slightly shaded box and uses bold, sans-serif letters. The words inform him that inflation is causing the economy to collapse. Anxious to protect the small space he calls his own, the man then turns to the electronic box sitting on his desk as a faster and more focused means of gaining essential information. As he waits for the flickering lights to settle on his rectangular screen, he suddenly thinks about how much of his world is shaped by boxes. He realizes that they make him feel mundane and standardized and inwardly blames the Modernist movement that was born out of the Bauhaus. If he took the time to follow that line of thinking, though, the man would learn that the Bauhaus and the Modernist movement were focused instead on ideas of comfort and creative familiarity. The earliest elements of what today’s experts refer to as characteristics of the modern period arose through the combined energies of the Arts and Crafts Movement with its natural forms and artistic investigations which flourished through the 1860s and the more machined elements of the Art Nouveau Movement to follow going into the 1890s. It is generally acknowledged that William Morris was the central founder of the Arts and Crafts Movement. His work and his philosophies were developed in direct response to the repressive feelings he had about the ever-encroaching and dehumanizing standardization of machine-made objects. These objects were becoming very popular as the Industrial Revolution got under way and people like Morris were becoming concerned that the artistry and brilliance of hand-made art would be lost. “Not only art but also everyday objects, buildings, décor, everything lacked a face, and it was the realization of its lack in this particular respect which began to make the period so cruelly conscious of its anonymity” (Cassau, 1962). The primary focus of the Arts and Crafts Movement was thus to place greatest value in the degree to which each piece had been crafted by hand. They deliberately engaged in performing art that was too difficult or intricate for a machine to produce, particularly the imprecise machines that were available in their time. In many ways, they were working to combat just the kind of impression experienced by our modern executive from the introduction. However, these types of designs took time to produce; time in which the artisan needed to be paid in order to cover their own needs while completing the work. In the meantime, the Industrial Revolution was in the process of introducing a number of innovations in material and technical goods, a progressive trend of thought in the minds of the populace, cultural movements toward mass consumerism as the prices became affordable to a rising class of people, new forms of art using new materials, new literary styles and new architectural approaches all bringing a number of massive changes to the daily life of all individuals living in the modern world. As a matter of pride and to ensure their art wouldn’t be reproducible by the mass-production machine, the detail of expression expressed in the Arts and Crafts movement was only possible through the careful and painstaking devotion to the task invoked by the individual artists themselves. It required a great deal of human ingenuity to replicate the natural curves and angles that were essential elements of the design. Indeed, these kinds of curves and angles remain difficult to reproduce by machine today. This concept started as a means of protecting the artisan, but had the unintended consequence of challenging the machine producers to improve their output. At the same time that they were working to perfect the machine, these producers were also working to find ways of ‘modernizing’ the designs into more manageable constructions – making them less ornate, more machine-friendly. This was sometimes explained as the result of the transition from an expensive material used in hand-made objects to a newer, more modern material such as plastic that could be molded in a machine. As the arts of this period went through this ‘refinement’ process – incorporating the new forms and materials being made available through expanded and improved industrial production and the higher demand for less expensive cultural products among the emerging consumer culture – the Arts and Crafts movement naturally evolved into the Art Nouveau movement by the late 1880s and into the 1890s. It was during the Art Nouveau period that the modern era of graphic design, and the subsequent focus on Modernism, was born. According to legend, painters James Pryde and William Nicholson, related by marriage and working under the title of the Beggarstaffs, began using colored paper cut into basic shapes to create Japanese inspired designs (Chwast 2000). Their concept refocused the attention of the world of art. This innovation neatly coincided with a general shift in society in favor of the wonderful possibilities of industry. This positive attitude was brought about by the greater ease of life then being experienced by the middle classes as mass-produced products became more available to them. To reflect this social interest in the capacity of the machine, designs became even more machine-friendly, adopting the simple and sometimes harsh lines of industry, bolder forms, simpler shapes and more functional design. Like the deceptively simple constructions of Japanese art, though, these bolder lines and sharper angles were not intended to dictate a world of harsh regularity. These blockish forms introduced into mainstream society were only the early roots of Modernism. It wasn’t until the emergence of the Bauhaus that Modernism can truly be said to have developed. Modernism is “the name given to the new forms that appeared in all of the arts – in paintings, sculpture, architecture, music and literature” (Pile 2005, p. 323). The concepts underlying the movement were not merely focused on the individual experience but purposely took a look at the condition of society as a whole at that moment in time. The movement was comprised of a wide collection of intellectual ideas, movements and processes of modernization. However, even this vague description is not broad enough to encompass the range of its objectives. In the study of architecture and interior design, modernity could be perceived as the “dialectical relationship ... which modernism consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, positively or negatively reflects the effects of capitalist development” (Heynen 1999, p.4). Far from the strictly sanitized, standardized, single-viewpoint it has been accused of, modernism is vastly multi-dimensional in its scope with historical, sociological, philosophical, and cultural contexts interwoven into the shifting fabric of society in an interactive dance in which each affects and reflects the other. According to Malcolmson (2006), Modernism was a reflection of a search for “a better place for all citizens at all social levels after the appalling carnage of the Great War” (p. 410). In introducing the movement, the Bauhaus designers were driving contributors to the art of employing straight lines and the inventive use of materials in household items (Barr 1954, p. 220). They embraced the machine age as a means of providing comfort and clarity to a world still reeling from conflict and established machinery as a central characteristic throughout much of the rest of the Modern movement. Upon its introduction, the Modern movement didn’t create negative feelings of being hemmed in such as the executive from the introduction experienced. Far from driving audiences away, art created in this period helped to draw people closer together. This was reflected in the production of the art as the sculpture artists found themselves relying more and more upon manufactured materials and fabrication processes began to innovate in efforts to meet the demands of the artists. This forced cooperation began to blur the boundaries that had once existed between the world of high art and the world of the everyday. This shift in thinking and production was also an intentional response to the corporate take-over of the world by insisting upon taking something back from this manufactured landscape. “By using these industrial-commercial processes and materials, they subvert these same processes and materials. Modernism effectively steals the language of those wielding power (the military/industrial complex), and by association, the American Federal Government” (Richard Serra, 1989). Although it was perceived that the world of high art was becoming increasingly driven by the interests of the wealthy and the laws of commerce, settling into a codified ritual of production and technique, elements of artistic practice such as in the world of sculpture became set apart from this perception. Sculpture became a form of break-out art because of the rapid changes that were taking place in the field as new materials and forms were made available as a result of increasing advances in technology and production. At this period in time, most of the major societies of the world were experiencing turbulent change and people were searching for comfort, reliability and a lack of surprises. The rebellious attitude on the part of sculpture to resist conforming to establishment demands for order served to establish this medium as the art form of the people. This was an idea that was embraced by the individuals creating the work. “Sculptors have preferred inscrutability to compliance with the values of a world increasingly influenced by marketing and entertainment. The sheer variety of materials and forms that have been presented as sculpture … makes it clear that sculpture has not been regarded as a stable concept with fixed boundaries” (Causey, 1998, p. 7). During this emerging period of Modernism, everything that could be designed – furniture, architecture, sculpture, typography – was deliberately created in a way that would bring attention to the harsh focus on functionality that characterized the period of rebuilding and recovery that followed the destruction of the war years. Materials had to serve a purpose to be considered ‘not wasteful’. In response to this sentiment, the Bauhaus approach stripped its forms of as many unnecessary design elements as possible, graphically insisting upon the functionality element of the finished product as the driving force. The designers made it clear that the beauty of the piece was to be found in the simplicity of its line and the functionality of its form rather than its artistic embellishments or aesthetic extras. The artists perhaps most responsible for driving the modern movement were not sculptors, though, but architects. These architects include Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright. None of these architects are generally thought of as supporting a standardized, creatively sterile, space. For these men, modernism was mankind’s newest search for an utopic space in which the artistic and aesthetic movements so important to mankind’s existence could be merged with the mass-production capabilities and new, more efficient materials of the age that made it possible for these products to be accessible to the common man. Mies van der Rohe created great mystical skyscraper designs that challenged man’s imagination in their ability to so delicately yet sturdily touch the sky. Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye was a model of the international style, providing scope for the surrounding environment to visually flow under the building with the use of columns, eliminating load-bearing walls for maximum flexibility and constructing with a flat roof that can be used for a variety of purposes such as gardening or patio space. In both these cases, the designs were intended to function for the best application for whoever used it – denoting the age of citizenry. Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs intentionally sought out a harmony between the mass-produced materials of the new age, the understanding of the human spirit and the natural forces of the site’s environment. These men led the modernist movement in the areas of architecture and, through their ideas, were able to heavily influence the designs of numerous objects moving into the future. Their designs strove for the heights of logic, use of space as fluid planes, clarity of structure, and surfaces as fine materials. Le Corbusier wasn’t going for bare square blocks in his constructions. Instead, he developed the ideology of using colors in abstractions, incorporating materials such as bottles, pitchers and glasses in his buildings as well as creating innovative and intuitive floor plans and elevations in buildings. These advances in architectural theory also had a profound impact on the emerging graphic arts industry during this period. This development reflects the close connection that existed between organic human forms and precise machine production which was the emphasis of the Art Nouveau period. “When used together, asymmetrical typography, geometric layout, and photographic illustration defined the radical new form language of Modernist design” (Chwast, 89). The recognition of this closer connection between man and machine worked together with the earlier advancements that had taken place between art and commerce. The graphic arts era truly came into its power through the areas of advertising and packaging, but adopted the clean shapes and lines of the architects to be in keeping with the needs of the machine production techniques used for these types of materials. Again, there were a number of key artists working through this period including Paul Renner and Jan Tschichold. The work of these men in the realm of typography essentially re-wrote the rules of this art to reflect the changing ideals and designs of the architects and image-makers. The founding names of the graphic arts industry – Tschichold, Herbert Bayer, Laszlo Moholy-Magy and El Lissitzky – all emerged in conjunction with this movement. The primary communicators of the modernist style within the graphic arts arena were typography and layout. As such, they also helped to further define the style into other areas. “The official lettering on most signs and buildings at the 1925 exposition, Peignot, became one of the typographic emblems of the age. In addition, the elegant specimen sheets of Moderne display faces produced by type foundries served as paeans to the style” (Chwast, 2000). The increased awareness and sophisticated manipulation of the connection between the message and the design features enabled graphic design and typography to become fields viable in and of themselves. Although the intentions and pursuits of these artists was not to produce the unsettled sterility experienced by our hypothetical introductory executive, other artists of their time voiced their own objections. One such group was the COBRA artists. This was a group of surrealists such as Asger Jorn, Joseph Noiret, Christian Dortemont, Corneille and Karel Appel, all of whom believed in the importance of spontaneity and expressionism in art. They aligned themselves directly opposite the rationalist grid that had been adopted by modernists. These artists felt modernism as an ideal failed to grasp the true mass consciousness of the people. Instead, they charged the modernist movement considered man an unconscious element of the architectural framework and thus failed to incorporate elements to address his spirit. Residential buildings constructed in this age reflected these ideals of mass production, and became a superimposition of the machines in factories upon the household rather than a reflection or inspiration of the aesthetic sense of man (Sadler 1999 p. 7). Despite this, modernism has proved to be a generational movement as the style continues to inspire many present day architects. The works performed by the artisans of the 20th century have transformed the ornate and organic environment of the past into architectural styles that reflect without imposition the experience of the users, lifestyles and surroundings. There is a clear emphasis on functionality first, but a strong appeal to the aesthetic remains. In numerous forms of arts and objects, the modernists have heavily influenced the scheme of construction through their development of systems of approach, plans, designs and structure, all created with from the central ideology of serving people as they exist within their holistic environment. If the principals of the Modernist movement had not been so quickly and enthusiastically adopted by the general public, new innovations leading into the 21st century might have taken the path illustrated in the steampunk movement. This area of artistic expression speculates upon how the world would have been different if steam power had remained the primary source of energy. “One of the most important influences has to be Japanese animation, or anime, which is replete with images of mechanical robots, neo-Zeppelin starships, goggle-wearing hackers, and the melding of the techno with the organic” (Bebergal, 2007). Throughout the Victorian era (roughly the mid to late 1800s), society experimented with the various forms of energy that had thus far been discovered. At that point in time, steam power held a strong advantage over coal or other forms of energy because it was more widely available and more familiar. Machines designed to work using steam power must necessarily be different in style and appearance than machines using gasoline or electricity. Artists attempting to envision just how these machines would have to be different while still functioning to produce the needed results caused many to reflect back into the Arts and Crafts movement for their design inspirations instead of the extremely machined art nouveau. Although it reflects to some degree a reaction against the concepts of the Modernist movement, steampunk is one form of the Postmodern art movement which directly followed Modernism. The Postmodern art movement was similar to the Modern movement in that it was characterized by the new technology of its age. It differed from the Modern movement, though, in its focus on a return to the principles of art history. It avoided returning to the art of the past in its profound use within the commercialized social sphere of the 20th and into the 21st century. Postmodernism is characterized by “a playful kinetic geometry featuring floating forms, sawtooth rules, and randomly placed blips and lines; multiple layered and fragmented images; pleasant pastel harmonies; discordant, letterspaced typography; and frequent references to art and design history” (Chwast, 2000). Artists working from a postmodern perspective realized representation, whether it is expressed in words or images or a combination of the two, is not a neutral or innocent activity. Instead, it is an interaction that can have profound effects on everyday lives. Postmodernism examines the idea that there are numerous ways of interpreting the world. Although there are some critics who would argue that postmodern art relies on a deconstructionist approach to social symbols and forms as a means of discovering the ultimate expression of the sublime, the reality of the movement is that no forms exist in the world that have not acquired specific societal meanings. Yet there are numerous examples that demonstrate the various ways in which artists have deliberately worked to influence contemporary thought within their art. They do this even though the movement is strong in the awareness that the use of symbols is an inexact science because of the indeterminate nature of the message contained in the sublime as it is interpreted by an audience member. By challenging each individual’s concept of the meaning of specific images or of words, these works become powerful tools in contributing to the social reshaping of political and/or societal views at the same time that they are blurring the boundaries of what we thought we knew. Through this study, it has been discovered that the monotonous, unimaginative experience of the hypothetical executive in the introduction was actually a period filled with innovation, change, profound exploration of the human spirit and discovery of more sublime forms of expression. The modern period began near the end of the previous century and was characterized primarily by a revolution then occurring in the world. The machine age would change all aspects of society and this necessarily had an effect upon artistic expression and purpose. It also began to establish a cyclic pattern of artistic expression that led to deep insights regarding today’s developments in the graphic arts. Although started with an aversion to the dehumanizing effects of the machines, modernism is a reflection of society’s softening toward the machine thanks to the comforts provided. The art reflected this impression of the machine, focusing on designs that could be easily mass produced. At the same time, the products produced reflected the major concepts of the machine age. Examples include the clean, sharp lines and bold shapes found in architecture of the period. Finally, the modern movement began to recognize and even embrace the relationship between art and business as the graphic arts industry was born. With continued use, these forms became condensed into minimalism and abstraction, both of which characterize the Modern period. Works Cited Barr, Jr. A. Masters of Modern Art. New York: Simon and Schuster: 1954. Bebergal, Peter. “The Age of Steampunk.” The Boston Globe. (August 26, 2007). April 22, 2010 Cassou, Jean, Emil Langui and Nikolaus Pevsner. Gateway to the Twentieth Century: Art and Culture in a Changing World. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962. Causey, Andrew. Sculpture Since 1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Chwast, Seymour and Steven Heller. Graphic Style: From Victorian to Digital. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000. Malcolmson, P. “From Bauhaus to Our House: Modernism, 1914-1939.” Queen’s Quarterly. Volume: 113. Issue: 3. Fall Issue, (2006). Pile, J. F. A History of Interior Design. Laurence King Publishing, 2005. “Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc.” Art Law. Harvard: Harvard Law School. (1989). April 22, 2010 Sadler, S. The Situationist City. The MIT Press, 1999. Read More