Before Class: Chapter Sixteen 3/23/09

1. Sum up the reading in your own words in 1 paragraph.
After the war ended in April 1919, the Weimar Arts and Crafts School reopened under a new name, Das Staatliche Bauhaus (The State Home for Building) and a new director, Walter Gropius. The Bauhaus at Weimer drew inspiration from expressionism and we quite visionary. Advanced ideas about color, form, and space were integrated into the design vocabulary when Der Blaue Reiter painters Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky joined the staff in 1920 and 1922. At Bauhaus there was no distinction between fine and applied art. Johannes Itten established the heart of the preliminary courses of Bauhaus, wanting the students to release their creative abilities, develop an understanding of the physical nature of materials, and to teach the fundamental principles of design. In 1923 Itten left Bauhaus because of a disagreement with Gropius on the conduct of his class. In 1919 De Stijl was introduced to the Bauhaus community by teacher Lyonel Feininger. In 1923 the Bauhaus slogan changed from “A Unity of Art and Handicraft” to “Art and Technology, a New Unity” because ideas of romantic medievalism and expressionism were changing into applied-design. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was a restless experimenter who explored painting, photography, film, sculpture, and graphic design; he also played around with new materials such as acrylic resin and plastic, and with new techniques like kinetic motion, light, and transparency. In April of 1925 Bauhaus moved from Weimer to Dessau due to tension with the government. During the Dessau period the Bauhaus Corporation, a business organization, was created to handle sale of workshop prototypes to industry. The name was also changed to Hochschule fur Gestaltung (High School for Form) and the influential Bauhaus magazine began its publication. The final years of the Bauhaus school were complicated due to the Nazi party trying to close it down and then eventually succeeding. Later in the chapter there was a section talking about the changes in typography and new developments with sans-serifs.

2. Name the one thing (or person) you found most interesting from the reading.
I found Laszlo Moholy-Nagy to be really interesting. He was like a Renaissance man in a sense. He was involved in a lot of different things with Bauhaus and influenced the style of the school.

3. State at least one question you have after the reading. (if you state none here, you’d better have more detail done above to offset the work.)
What was the big deal with Van Doesburg? What was he doing/teaching that Gropius didn't like? Why did the Nazi party close down Bauhaus?