Bauhaus

A school of art, design and architecture founded in Germany in 1919. Bauhaus style is characterized by its severely economic, geometric design and by its respect for materials.
The Bauhaus school was created when Walter Gropius was appointed head of two art schools in Weimar and united them in one. He coined the term Bauhaus as an inversion of 'Hausbau' - house construction.  Gropius wanted to create a new unity of crafts, art and technology at a school with an international and interdisciplinary orientation. Its goal was the building as a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art). Through the innovative methods of an integrated way of teaching art, the idea was to equally prepare young artists in theory and practice for the new task.

Teaching at the school concentrated on functional craftsmanship and students were encouraged to design with mass-produced goods in mind. Studies at the Bauhaus began with the obligatory preliminary course, which conveyed methods for working with artistic material using a new pedagogical and sometimes experimental approach. This was followed by training in the workshops that largely eliminated the separation between work and theory. The goal of the education was to apply what had been learned in the theory of building.

The heart of the education was apprenticeship in the workshops, which offered a broad spectrum ranging from the processing of glass to the use of wood, ceramics and metal to stagecraft, typography, photography and advertising. The workshops were initially headed by the dual team of a craftsman as the work master and an artist as the master of form in order to guide art and technology into a new unity. The goal of the workshop activities was to apply the theory of building.

The small, international school – which very quickly made a name for itself – had an active political and cultural life that integrated all of the arts. Modern lifestyles were tested, women were allowed to study outside of the women’s classes and a libertarian approach prevailed. The parties, which were celebrated on the birthday of Walter Gropius and other occasions, were also legendary.  Enormously controversial and unpopular with right wingers in Weimar, the school moved in 1925 to Dessau.

The Bauhaus moved again to Berlin in 1932 and was closed by the Nazis in 1933. The school had some illustrious names among it's teachers, including Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Marcel Breuer. Its influence in design of architecture, furniture, typography and weaving has lasted to this day - the look of the modern environment is almost unthinkable without it.  Like no other institution in Germany, the Bauhaus represents the modern age in the 20th century.

Further information:

Interview with Wilfred Franks (one of the few surviving students from the Bauhaus, dated 1999)

The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation Today
http://www.bauhaus-dessau.de/index.php?en


A comprehensive assembled collection represents the variety of assignments given to students at the Bauhaus in Weimar (1919-1925), Dessau (1925-1932), and Berlin (1932-1933)
http://library.getty.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=76390

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau is an international style of art, architecture, and design that peaked in popularity during the last decade of the 19th century through the beginning of the First World War. It was characterized by an elaborate ornamental style based on asymmetrical lines, frequently depicting flowers, leaves or tendrils, or in the flowing hair of a female. It can be seen most effectively in the decorative arts, for example interior design, glass work and jewelery. However, it was also seen in posters and illustration as well as certain paintings and sculptures of the period.

The origins of Art Nouveau are found in the resistance of William Morris to the cluttered compositions and the revival tendencies of the Victorian era and his theoretical approaches that helped initiate the Arts and crafts movement.

The movement was influenced by the Symbolists most obviously in their shared preference for exotic detail, as well as by Celtic and Japanese art. Art Nouveau flourished in Britain with its progressive Arts and Crafts movement, but was highly successful all around the world.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Art Nouveau transformed neighborhoods and whole towns around the world into remarkable examples of the contemporary, vital art of the age. Even though its style was at its zenith for just a decade, Art Nouveau permeated a wide range of the arts. Jewelery, book design, glasswork, and architecture all bore the imprint of a style that was informed by High Victorian design and craftwork, including textiles and wrought iron. Even Japanese wood-block prints inspired the development of Art Nouveau, as did the artistic traditions of the local cultures in which the genre took root.

The leading exponents included the illustrators Aubrey Beardsley and Walter Crane in England; the architects Henry van de Velde and Victor Horta in Belgium; the jewelery designer René Lalique in France; the painter Gustav Klimt in Austria; the architect Antonio Gaudí in Spain; and the glassware designer Louis C. Tiffany and the architect Louis Sullivan in the United States. Its most common themes were symbolic and frequently erotic and the movement, despite not lasting beyond 1914 was important in terms of the development of abstract art.


Furthur information:

A really informative exhibit with audio to take you through the Art Nouveau period:
http://www.nga.gov/feature/nouveau/exhibit_audio.shtm

http://artnouveau.pagesperso-orange.fr/en/index.htm

A highly functional flash site displaying the work of Klimt:
http://www.iklimt.com/

The Arts and Crafts Movement

Industrialization resulted in a decline in creativity as designs by engineers focused on efficiency. This resulted in a move away from handicraft in favor of mass-produced goods. In reaction against the social, moral, and artistic confusion of the Industrial Revolution, the Arts and Crafts Movement arose during the later part of the nineteenth century.

The Arts and Crafts movement initially developed in England during the latter half of the 19th century. Subsequently this style was taken up by American designers, with somewhat different results. In the United States, the Arts and Crafts style was also known as Mission style.

This movement, which challenged the tastes of the Victorian era, was inspired by the social reform concerns of thinkers such as Walter Crane and John Ruskin, together with the ideals of reformer and designer, William Morris.

Their notions of good design were linked to their notions of a good society. This was a vision of a society in which the worker was not brutalized by the working conditions found in factories, but rather could take pride in his craftsmanship and skill. The rise of a consumer class coincided with the rise of manufactured consumer goods. In this period, manufactured goods were often poor in design and quality. Ruskin, Morris, and others proposed that it would be better for all if individual craftsmanship could be revived-- the worker could then produce beautiful objects that exhibited the result of fine craftsmanship, as opposed to the shoddy products of mass production. Thus the goal was to create design that was... " for the people and by the people, and a source of pleasure to the maker and the user." Workers could produce beautiful objects that would enhance the lives of ordinary people, and at the same time provide decent employment for the craftsman.

Medieval Guilds provided a model for the ideal craft production system. Aesthetic ideas were also borrowed from Medieval European and Islamic sources. Japanese ideas were also incorporated early Arts and Crafts forms. The forms of Arts and Crafts style were typically rectilinear and angular, with stylized decorative motifs remeniscent of medieval and Islamic design. In addition to William Morris, Charles Voysey was another important innovator in this style. One designer of this period, Owen Jones, published a book entitled The Grammar of Ornament, which was a source-book of historic decorative design elements, largely taken from medieval and Islamic sources. This work in turn inspired the use of such historic sources by other designers.

In time, the English Arts and Crafts movement came to stress craftsmanship at the expense of mass market pricing. The result was exquisitely made and decorated pieces that could only be afforded by the very wealthy. Thus the idea of art for the people was lost, and only relatively few craftsman could be employed making these fine pieces. This evolved English Arts and Crafts style came to be known as "Aesthetic Style." It shared some characteristics with the French/Belgian Art Nouveau movement.

However in the United States, the Arts and Crafts ideal of design for the masses was more fully realized, though at the expense of the fine individualized craftsmanship typical of the English style. In New York, Gustav Stickley was trying to serve a burgeoning market of middle class consumers who wanted affordable, decent looking furniture. By using factory methods to produce basic components, and utilizing craftsmen to finish and assemble, he was able to produce sturdy, serviceable furniture which was sold in vast quantities, and still survives. The rectilinear, simpler American Arts and Crafts forms came to dominate American architecture, interiors, and furnishings in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Today Stickley's furniture is prized by collectors, and the Stickley Company still exists, producing reproductions of the original Stickley designs.

The term Mission style was also used to describe Arts and Crafts Furniture and design in the United States. The use of this term reflects the influence of traditional furnishings and interiors from the American Southwest, which had many features in common with the earlier British Arts and Crafts forms. Charles and Henry Greene were important Mission style architects working in California. Southwestern style also incorporated Hispanic elements associated with the early Mission and Spanish architecture, and Native American design. The result was a blending of the arts and crafts rectilinear forms with traditional Spanish colonial architecture and furnishings. Mission Style interiors were often embellished with Native American patterns, or actual Southwestern Native American artifacts such as rugs, pottery, and baskets. The collecting of Southwestern artifacts became very popular in the first quarter of the twentieth century.



Further reading:  http://www.philaathenaeum.org/artbound/case6.html
http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/graphic_designers/william_morris/william_morris.html