(2019-03-14) The Importance Of Fun For A Prolific And Innovative Bauhaus

The Importance of Fun for a Prolific and Innovative Bauhaus. Many imitators of the famous art school’s output have missed the surreal, sensual, irrational, and instinctual spirit that drove its creativity.

To understand this other, weirder Bauhaus, one must return to the crucible in which it was formed. The German architect Walter Gropius had returned from World War I, having survived numerous near-death experiences and traumas, to find his country near-bankrupt. There was an atmosphere of exhaustion but also a nearly hysterical sense of hope.
“Let us tear down the walls that our misguided book-learning put up between the arts and all become builders again,” he proclaimed.*

With a degree of romanticism, Gropius looked back to Die Bauhütten medieval guilds, how they worked together to create Gesamtkunstwerk (total works of art from the spire to the stained glass to the door handles), like the Gothic cathedral in his manifesto, and lamented the barriers that had since been artificially put up between the arts and the crafts.

To start a new truly modern way of designing the world, Gropius knew he had to engineer a childhood.

The streamlined Bauhaus developed during its second act; primarily with the arrival of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

The motto of “Art and craft—a new unity,” became “Art and technology—a new unity.”

There was certainly a sense of renewed clarity in the Bauhaus with Gropius (and even more so later with Hannes Meyer and Mies van der Rohe) reining in indulgence and obscurantism

The Bauhaus was also encouraged to aim beyond the left-field of art by financial necessity. To survive, they had to sell commercial products like the wallpapers of Maria Rasch and Margaret Camilla Leiteritz. Here too, though, the aim was to enter and transform the everyday lives of the many.

The initial aim Gropius declared was “to liberate the individual by breaking down conventional patterns of thought in order to make way for personal experiences and discoveries which will enable him to see his own potentialities and limitations.”

Dancing was an integral part of the Bauhaus.

“Tell me how you party and I'll tell you who you are,” Oskar Schlemmer claimed, designing not just the theatrical events but many of the public parties for which the Bauhaus became famous.

The parties were seen as a creative and cathartic outlet, bonding the Bauhäusler together and spreading the word among the wider community

They fulfilled a ritualistic purpose for Gropius but they were also a way of leveling pretensions through humor and humility

The events were soundtracked by the Bauhaus in-house band, which played pan-national music, for the pan-national audience, underscored by Jazz and “a bone-rattling rhythm that makes its mark,” in their own words. It was all part of the wider plan, “Play becomes party—party becomes work—work becomes play,” as Johannes Itten put it. (play ethic)

The Bauhaus aimed for an egalitarian and open-minded environment. “Any healthy man can become a musician, painter, sculptor, or architect,” Moholy-Nagy claimed, “just as when he speaks, he is a ‘speaker.’”

Female teachers and pupils however found themselves frozen out of many departments, to the frustration of exceptionally talented figures like Anni Albers. Many were forced into textiles, primarily due to Itten’s absurd insistence (and Gropius’s acceptance) that women were better skilled at 2-D than 3-D.

Flaws aside, when the Nazis closed the Bauhaus, a force for progress and pluralism was silenced.