Category: Art

A Brief History of Bauhaus

Image result for bauhaus school
https://www.bauhaus-dessau.de/en/architecture/bauhaus-building.html

In 2019 we celebrate the centennial of Bauhaus in Weimar Germany. The Staatliches Bauhaus was founded by architect Walter Gropius in 1919 and promoted the creation of functional art. It is an understatement to say that its ideas are still hugely relevant today. Bauhaus has shaped every inch of the public life and is credited as the catalyst for modern architecture and furniture design, as well as mid 20th century painting and sculpture. Whether you like it or not, Bauhaus is undeniably one of the most successful and influential artistic movements in modern history.

‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ or ‘total work of art’ is the idea behind Bauhaus. The familiar geometric shapes and blocks of primary colours (blue, red and yellow) are exactly what Bauhaus is about-elegance in simplicity. It aims to bring art into contact with everyday life through architecture, design, performing arts and applied arts, not just within the confines of fine art. The emphasis on function and lack of ornamentation is epitomized in its fundamental principles- ‘form follows function’ and ‘less is more’. Sounds familiar? Take a look inside IKEA’s catalogue and you will see the explicit resemblance between the design maxims. Hence an afternoon stroll into any IKEA store is arguably a visit to a living Bauhaus museum.

Walter Gropius introduced a new method of teaching- artists worked collectively as a community and replaced the tradition of pupil-teacher relationships, and even now Bauhaus projects are often collaborative. Gropius’ curriculum included graphic design, typography, theatre, wall painting, weaving, pottery, metalwork, carpentry and architecture. The 1923 Bauhaus exhibition put it on the map, with an impressive array of furniture, toys and light fixtures. The association with industry developed later on with the new Dessau ethos. Designs intended for mass-production were encouraged and products were created to ‘perfectly serve their function’ whilst being ‘inexpensive, durable and beautiful’. Take a look at Kandinsky and you’ll get a sense of Bauhaus paintings- flat planes are paired with overlapping shapes to suggest dimensionality. Blocks of colour and bold typography are regular features of Bauhaus graphic design, especially on the modernist posters and avant-garde collages. Abstract sculptures, open spaces inspired the look of mid-century modernist homes, whilst much of the clean lines and functional minialism were popularized by master architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

But its widespread success today was not without trials and tribulations. Sure, the School of Bauhaus was born in a backdrop of radical change- the Kaiser had abdicated, troops were streaming back from the trenches and the Weimar Republic was at its infantile stages of democracy. That did not safeguard the School from criticism and many were agitated by its radicalism. The School was forced to move to Dessau due to budget cuts and its unpopularity with Weimar Conservatives: the internationalist outlook, large portion of foreign students and progressive politics did not sit well with many. The site in Dessau is now a UNESCO World Heritage, and visitors can see how shockingly ahead of his time Gropius was- the sight of the white building modernist complex blends in easily with modern buildings. Sadly, the Nazis considered Bauhaus a product of decadent, communist intellectualism and ultimately the School fractured under external and internal political pressure and dissolved in 1933 following an unsuccessful relocation to Berlin.

The upside to this was, in the unforeseeable future, Bauhaus would spread across the world and its loyal advocates would preserve and develop its ideas right up to the present day. Josef Albers took with him the methods of Bauhaus to Black Mountain College in North Carolina in 1933; László Moholy-Nagy left Europe and founded the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937; Marcel Breuer, Klee and Kandinsky fled to Basel, Zurich, London, Switzerland and Paris. Some even went as far as Chile. Note the irony in the unintended consequences of Nazi persecution- The Jewish missionaries of Bauhaus helped build the now UNESCO-listed White City in Tel Aviv, a 4000-building strong testimony to Bauhaus influence. Its influence also shapes the cityscape of urban Japan, London, Chicago and many other places. Next time you travel to a new city, try and find the underlying brushwork of Gropius’ school, whether unabashed or subtle, in buildings, signs, furniture and even the performing arts.

Image result for tel aviv white city
https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2012/may/15/travel-tel-aviv-israel-white-city/

A Bigger Splash

A Bigger Splash –David Hockney, 1967

A Bigger Splash 1967 David Hockney born 1937 Purchased 1981 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T03254

 (Hockney, 1967)

I came across this striking painting whilst visiting the Tate in London on a school trip. What captured my attention was the Californian impression captured by the bold monotonous colours of turquoise and pink, with the predominant horizontal building directly in contrast with a splash of white in the centre.

A Bigger Splash is the largest of a collection of three paintings by Hockney depicting splashes, the other two being A Splash and A Little Splash.  Hockney, born in England, visited Los Angeles in 1964 and subsequently fell in love with the hot climate and sensual, relaxed lifestyle. He painted a series of works all depicting swimming pools between 1964-71, and experimented with different techniques to explore the changing form of water surfaces, with influences including Bernard Cohen and Jean Dubruffet.

Hockney had recently discovered the benefits of fast-drying acrylic paint- Liquitex, a relatively new medium compared to the traditional oil paint, which he deemed more visually appropriate for the hot, parched climate of California.

With regards to the composition of the painting, what immediately stands out is the predominantly horizontal perspective. The view of the swimming pool rests on the background of a low-lying 60s modernist house. A sense of balance is achieved through the equal division of sky, building and patio on the upper half against the pool on the lower half.  The startling oblique diving board juts out from the foreground adds to the sense of perspective. It is interesting to note the subtle details used to emphasize the splash- the slightly thicker white line on the building’s flat roof is marked at the same vertical line as the splash, and the splash itself being in line with the diagonal diving board.

The colours of the painting resonate with the contrast of the diving board- the yellow at odds with the turquoise water and sky. The monotonous blocks of colour were actually rollered onto the canvas before Hockney uses a smaller brush to add in the detail of the chair, reflections, trees and grass.  Overall the painting is created through a constrained palette, mixing or applied as tints colours such as ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, Naples yellow, Hooker’s green, titanium white, and raw and burnt sienna. Also typical of Hockney’s style at the time was leaving raw canvas on the border. In this case it extends to within the painting itself- under careful observation, one would notice that a thin line of the pool’s edge is actually left unpainted.

A Bigger Splash was based on a photograph Hockey found in a book about building swimming pools. The raw canvas on the outside, leaving a near perfect square, is perhaps indicative of a Polaroid effect.  Hockney acknowledges how seeing a splash on painting is even more striking than on photo- it cannot be frozen in time. He later went on to create portraits through collages of the same subject on different photographs taken over a period of time.

‘When you photograph a splash, you’re freezing a moment and it becomes something else. I realise that a splash could never be seen this way in real life, it happens too quickly. And I was amused by this, so I painted it in a very, very slow way.’ [1] Hockney took two weeks to complete the painting, with the majority of the time spent painting the central splash with a variety of very small brushes, and he noted the irony of taking a considerable amount of time to capture a fleeting moment.

[1] Catherine Kinley, David Hockney: Seven Paintings, exhibition brochure, Tate Gallery, London 1992, reproduced [p.5] in colour