Bauhaus Style

The Bauhaus, the school of art and design founded in Germany in 1919 and shut down by the Nazis in 1933, brought together artists, architects and designers in an extraordinary conversation about modern art. Bauhaus 1919-1933, published to accompany a major multimedia exhibition at MoMA, is the first comprehensive treatment of the subject by MoMA since 1938 and offers a new generational perspective on the 20th century's most influential experiment in artistic education. It brings together works in a broad range of mediums, including industrial design, furniture, architecture, graphics, photography, textiles, ceramics, theatre and costume design, and painting and sculpture - many of which have rarely if ever been seen outside of Germany. Featuring about 400 colour plates and a rich range of documentary images, this publication includes two overarching images by the exhibition's curators, Leah Dickerman and Barry Bergdoll, concise interpretive essays on key objects by over twenty leading scholars, and an illustrated, narrative chronology.

The first comprehensive history in English of film at the Bauhaus, exploring practices that experimented with film as an adaptable, elastic “polymedium.” With Design in Motion, Laura Frahm proposes an alternate history of the Bauhaus—one in which visual media, and film in particular, are crucial to the Bauhaus’s visionary pursuit of integrating art and technology. In the first comprehensive examination in English of film at the Bauhaus, Frahm shows that experimentation with film spanned a range of Bauhaus practices, from textiles and typography to stage and exhibition design. Indeed, Bauhausler deployed film as an adaptable, elastic “polymedium,” malleable in shape and form, unfolding and refracting into multiple material, aesthetic, and philosophical directions. Frahm shows how the encounter with film imbued the Bauhaus of the 1920s and early 1930s with a flexible notion of design, infusing painting with temporal concepts, sculptures with moving forms, photographs with sequential aesthetics, architectural designs with a choreography of movement. Frahm considers, among other things, student works that explored light and the transparent features of celluloid and cellophane; weaving practices that incorporate cellophane; experimental films, social documentaries, and critical reportage by Bauhaus women; and the proliferation of film strips in posters, book covers, and other typographic work. Viewing the Bauhaus’s engagement with film through a media-theoretic lens, Frahm shows how film became a medium for “design in motion.” Movement and process, rather than stability and fixity, become the defining characteristics of Bauhaus educational, aesthetic, and philosophical ethos.

An analytical and practical adaptation of the Bauhaus books showing amazing possibilities for graphic designers today.

A stimulating survey of how the Bauhaus and the modernist revolution have shaped graphic design. This lively and authoritative book explores the influence of the Bauhaus and modernism on typography and book design. Distinguished book designer and author Alan Bartram examines work by such key figures as Max Bill, F. T. Marinetti, El Lissitzky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Jan Tschichold, and Paul Rand. All of the carefully chosen examples--some of which have not been previously reproduced--clearly demonstrate the modernist revolution that took place in graphic design. In an informative introductory essay, Bartram surveys the German art and design school known as the Bauhaus. Under Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus intended to create an academic, theoretical, and practical synthesis of all forms of visual expression--a marrying of art, architecture, industry, and design that had never been attempted before. Although the Bauhaus existed for only fourteen years, from 1920 to 1934, Bartram asserts that its philosophy influenced the appearance of almost every kind of modernist artifact throughout the twentieth century and continues to do so today. Engagingly written and handsomely illustrated, this volume is a valuable resource for designers and book lovers everywhere.

The author is dead, long live the author! This paradox has shaped discussions on authorship since at least the 1960s, when the dominant notion of the individual author-genius was first critically questioned. The ongoing discussion has mainly focused on literature and the arts, but has ignored nearly any artistic practice beyond these two fields. “Constructions of Media Authorship” aims to fill this gap: the volume’s interdisciplinary contributions reflect historical and current artistic practices within various media and attempt to grasp them from different perspectives. The first part sheds a new light on different artistic and design practices and questions the still dominant view on the individual identifiable author. The second part discusses creative practices in literature, emphasizing the interrelation of aesthetic discourses and media practices. The third part investigates authoring in audiovisual media, especially film and TV, while the final part turns to electronic and digital media and their collective creativity and hybrid mediality. The volume is also an attempt to develop new methodological approaches, focusing on the interplay between various human and non-human actors in different media constellations.

Shows forty decorating styles and demonstrates special painting techniques.

An exploration of the Bauhaus school and its legacy in the context of the modernist period, including its wider influence on art, design, and education. Bauhaus Goes West is the story of cultural and artistic exchange between Germany and the West over a period of seventy years. It presents a view of the influential Bauhaus school in relation to the wider modernist period, distinguishing between the received idea of the Bauhaus and the documented reality. Initially, the Bauhaus was seen as an educational experiment, only later was it recognized as a style and a movement. Working from meticulous research, Alan Powers reexamines speculations about the reception and understanding of individuals connected with the Bauhaus school and what they ultimately achieved. Looking in greater detail at the theory and practice of art, design, and architecture between the arts and crafts movement and modernism, this book challenges the assumption that the 1920s represented a void of reactionary conservatism. Bauhaus Goes West offers an opportunity to recover some of the overlooked aspects of avant-garde that ran parallel with the work of the Bauhaus, such as the film-making of Francis Brugui re and Len Lye, and the development of art instruction for children under Marion Richardson and the London County Council.