Class #11 - March 27, 2013

Summary:

Walter Gropius: (1919-1928)

• Mastermind behind the BAUHAUS
• Creation of a school to marry Arts + Crafts
• A lot of utopian ideas -- very reoccurring

Council of Masters

• Grupius
• Johannas Ittan
• Got into the idea of being a monk
• Art supplies: picking up things from trash
• Understanding materials
• What is the nature of these materials?
• What differentiates these materials?
• BAUHAUS Exhibition of 1923
• Nasnsweif Niggy
• A lot of typography
• Graphic typography that is the imagery 
• Very open, lyrical and gesture-like
• Experiments with photograms
• Putting objects on top of paper and exposing them to light
• Photography: new technology, new image, new life
• Photo collages 

City of Weimar:
First Home-

• Become suspicious of the Bauhaus
• Becomes hostile when the city is exposed to their art

Second Home:

• The stairwell was important
• Emphasis of craft and materials
• Had a "made by" store which sold student work
• Bauhaus had their own magazine too
• Magazine cover: everything you need to know about the Bauhaus
• Produced books: experimented with type!
• Painted on glass and made it look 3D
• Kyle Cooper... SE7EN...geh! <3
• Looked at typeface and letter design
• Two alphabets: Aa Bb Cc Dd
• More efficient to combine both

Thoughts:

The Bauhaus has always interested me -- especially for a big fan of the band too! Although the Bauhaus has blossomed into a great movement, it was sad to learn about all of the depression the people apart of the school had to go through. The idea of combining artists and craftsmen was a brilliant idea-- we combine the two today and it works really well. Combining both craftsmen to produce high quality work and artists to make it aesthetically appealing, in my opinion, is what made the Bauhaus so successful.

Questions:

I wonder what it took to be apart of the Bauhaus school and how often students joined and left. Where parents objective towards this lifestyle? How long did it take to establish which classes would be the most successful and how did the idea of abstract form and color theory becoming a course. 

Class #10 - March 20, 2013

Russian Avant Garde Art

• Cubo-futurism
• Ideas of cubism
• Ideas of futurism
• Italian movement
• Seeking to express:
•  time
• movement
• kinetics 
• Supremitism
• Rejects function 
• Kazimir Malevich 
• The Black Square
• Russian Constructivism 
• Alexander Rochainco
• Kandinsky
• El Lissitzky
• What lies between painting and building?
• Calls his pieces "Prouns" (experiments)
• Worked on a poem book "For the Voice"
• Graphic poem book -- typography
• Montage
• Important as a new medium for a new age

• De Stijl
• About harmony
• Emphasized aesthetics but also wanted functionalism 
• Focused on rectilinear planes
• Tried to understand the mathematical structure of the universe
• Best known member of the group: Piet Mondrian
• Early on: all about horizontal and vertical lines
• Evolves in 1921 into asymmetry 
• Negative space becomes apart of a piece

BAUHAUS (1919-1933)

• Only existed for 14 years
• Had 33 Faculty members
• And 1250 Students
• 3 incarnations of the Bauhaus
• 1919-1925: Weimar, Germany - 1st location
• Leave because of the nazis and government
• 1923: 1st Public Exhibition
• 1924: Letter of Registration 
• 1925-1932: Dessau - 2nd location
• Kicked out because of the nazis
• 1928: Groupius replaced by Meyer
• 1930: Meyer replaced by van der Rohe
• 1932-1933: Berlin
• Utopian desire for a new spiritual society
• Unity of Artists & Craftsmen to build a new future
• Ideas from all Advanced Art & Design Movements were explored & applied to functional design
• Paul Klee -- Plainter
• Moholy Nagy -- Constructivist
• Johannas Itten -- Develops fondation program 
• Herbert Bayer 
• Kandinsky
• Mies van der Rohe
• Walter Groupus -- s1st Head of the Bauhaus
• Oscar Schlemmer
• Joseph Albers -- Color Theory

Class #9: March 13, 2013

Summary:

• Lucian Bernhard -- "Bern Hard"
• Creates a poster, Priester, which changes poster design
• Paints the family house -- bad idea
• Becomes and artist/painter
• Enters a poster contest working till the last minute
• His work was chosen from the trash
• New approach for design: Sachplakat
• Abstraction and common media
• Logo/name and one item
• Designer of typefaces and logos
• Attempting to do a lot of different things with his art

• WWI Posters were influenced by Bern Hard
• German and axis powers posters were "wrong minded" to Bern Hard and Hitler
• There's a point to these German posters
• Can still be illiterate and decipher the meanings
• Very powerful meanings and symbolism/abstract

• American posters were very literate
• Not very abstract --- looking in towards the future/sappy family
• A lof of manipulation on both sides toward buying war-bonds
• End of WWI, THE BAUHAUS ENTERS! 

• There is mathematics in artwork
• Every canvas deals with proportions
• Websites
• Painter's Canvas
• Videos etc
• If it's a pleasing composition, math is involved in design
• Negative spaces are used as an active component towards designs
• Very flat colors/planes are used to play with figure ground