From furniture and posters to crockery and cutlery, these exquisite objects show how the Bauhaus school shaped our idea of good design. For most of us, the word Bauhaus conjures up a certain type of modern architecture — that stark aesthetic that spawned a million tower blocks.
But the Bauhaus was much more than an architectural style — it was a new way of thinking, and a century since it was born, at the end of World War One, its ideas still set the pattern for the way we live today. No architecture was taught here. It was a sort of art school, but one like no other.
Instead of drawing nudes and still lives, students here were taught to look at the world around them in an entirely different way. He wanted to create a new breed of artists, who could turn their hands to anything. Traditional art schools were conservative and elitist. Technical colleges were dreary and conventional.
Gropius broke down the barrier between fine art and applied arts. Pupils learnt pottery, printmaking, book-binding and carpentry. They studied typography and advertising. They went back to basics, and began again with fresh eyes. For it to serve its purpose perfectly, it must fulfil its function in a practical way. They learnt on the job. The results were extraordinary. The Bauhaus produced an incredible array of artefacts, from angle poise lamps to chess sets, all distinguished by their functional and elegant construction.
They were simple and useful, and their simplicity made them beautiful. In an era of ornamentation, their streamlined appearance was revolutionary. This was a new age of design.
Like so many individual stories during this period, Ehrlich's involvement with the Nazis remains ambiguous. It is not clear whether his cooperation was a desperate act of survival, an opportunistic act of collaboration or, as the Neues Museum put it, an heroic act of resistance, "the typography Most historians agree that Ehrlich never identified with Nazi ideology. Indeed, other Bauhaus graduates left a far more compromised legacy, according to Weber.
Fritz Ertl, for example, was a former Bauhaus student who went on to become a high-ranking architect, responsible for the expansion of Auschwitz.
For Weber, the most troubling case is that of Herbert Bayer, the graphic designer responsible for the Bauhaus' iconic typography, who fled Germany in the late 30s and ended up in America. Bayer applied his Bauhaus training to Nazi propaganda and, yet, Weber says, "he sort of got a free ride once he got to the United States".
Of course, the compromised personal stories of a minority of Bauhauslers do not alter the radical and enduring legacy of the school itself. It is simply, according to Weber, a sobering reminder that the Modernist project and the Bauhaus' commitment to artistic teaching and practice could not guard against the worst excesses of fascism. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work.
More on:. Matthew Wade blasts Australia into World Cup final. Live music is ramping up again. These memories kept the spirit alive. Photography now played a more important part than it had earlier. The methodology of the New Bauhaus was adopted and modified by many other American colleges.
This played a role in pushing back the Beaux Arts tradition that had predominated in the USA up to that time. In West Germany, the Bauhaus idea of linking the arts and crafts was initially continued after the Second World War at crafts colleges such as those in Krefeld, Cologne and Kassel.
From , the College of Design in Ulm arrived on the scene with a claim to be working in the spirit of the Bauhaus.
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