4: "Bauhaus Reverse Abecedarian" by Dan Godston (Thursday, July 9)

"Bauhaus Reverse Abecedarian" by Dan Godston

Zeitgeist of the Weimar Republic, Mityko and Iwao
Yamawaki, yet much more than just color theory and design: less is much more.
Xtreme Total Theater! Breuer’s
Wassily chair, Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus Manifesto, Bauhaus wallpaper, weaving workshops,
Van der Rohe’s design of downtown post office w/ Calder’s Flamingo in front of it, first prize for Antonin
Urban’s design of a standardized “serial” house.
Triadic Ballet, took Tallahassee Civic Center design to Baghdad, Alexander
Schawinsky’s Flowing Architecture, photo of Hajo
Rose high jumping,
Question superfluity, Hans
Przyrembel’s hanging lamp with pull (1926), Pius Pahl’s 1932 drawing of a low-building estate, Walter Peterhans’ “Dead Hare.”
Oskar Schlemmer’s “Form Dance”—humans as marionettes? Happy
Ninetieth! Nazis shut it down, New Bauhaus in Chicago, North Carolina’s BMC: “experiment in art”,
Marianne Brandt’s teapots and lamps, Moholy-Nagy’s
Leda and the Swan, less is more, Lyonel Feininger’s woodcut cathedral.
Klee and Kandinsky—from the Blue Rider group to the Bauhaus.
Joost Schmidt’s poster of the Bauhaus’ 1923 show, Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square, Johannes
Itten form theory and Mazdaznan circle, industrialization’s challenges,
Herbert Bayer’s Bauhaus typeface morphs into Helvetica(?), Harvard takes Gropius,
Gropius designs Dessau Bauhaus building, boiled down to pure geometric form,
Freedom and discipline, form follows function forward and backwards.
“Equilibristics,” every part goes into the whole, “evolve a kinship of expression…how to maintain unity in
Diversity,” discipline to freedom, dot to line, diagram illustrating the Bauhaus curriculum,
Collaboration, “crystalline symbol of a new and coming faith,”
Backwards and forwards, Dessau to Berlin to Black Mountain College, Bauhaus history to future, The
ABC’s of Bauhaus, Anni Alber’s fiber arts innovations, and now we begin.