1

High Spirituality,

Highest Intellect

Anger and Sensuality

2

“StArt from zero.”

Walter Gropius, 1920

3

A language of vision: “a code of abstract forms addressed to immediate biological perception rather than to culturally conditioned intellect.”

— The ABCs of the Bauhaus and Design Theory

4

Johannes Itten

5

tHe “BASIc courSe” (Vorkurs)

“ a laboratory in which the elements of this visual language were identified and analyzed— from point, line, plane to color, texture, pattern, scale and contrast) and to teach these formal concepts to the students.”

See Ellen Lupton, J.Abbott Miller. ABC’s of the Bauhaus: Bauhaus and Design Theory.

Thames & Hudson 1993.

6

Wassily Kandinsky

7

Kandinsky’s on White II (1923)

8

9

High Spirituality, Devotion to Noble

Ideals and religious feeling

Highest Intellect

Pride, Avarice, Anger and Sensuality

Kandinsky envisioned pictorial composition as a system of oppositional forces.

10

“ We see this kind of fascination with organizing geometeric and typgraphic elements in formal opposition to attain this language of the visual over and over during this period.”

See Ellen Lupton, J.Abbott Miller. ABC’s of the Bauhaus: Bauhaus and Design Theory.

Thames & Hudson 1993.

11

Herbert Bayer 1969

12

Bauhau in Dessau

13

Herbert Bayer: Kandinsky’s Birthday exhibition 1926

14

Bayer, Bauhaus Letterhead 1925

15

Bayer: universal typeface 1925

16

Bayer: universal typeface 1925

17

“ we write everything in lowercase, as this saves us time, why two alphabets for only one word [...]? why write in capital letters when one does not speak in capital letters?”

—Herbert Bayer

18

BAYer’S IDeAS IN “oN tYPoGrAPHY”

— increased demands for our attention in the increasingly visually stimulating society

— from a new alphabet (that he feels will eventually surface)

— the changing mediums through which typography is expressed

Radical change will occur because of the changing mediums through which typography is expressed

19

We must fundamentally rethink the alphabet to really reform typography

20

Bayer: european Arts & crafts expo 1927

21

Bayer: Poelzig Lecture Poster 1926

22

Bayer: Staatliches Bauhaus (cover) 1923

23

László moholy-Nagy

24

“ everyone is equal before the machine...there is no tradition in technology, no class consciousness.”

—Moholy-Nagy

25

art and technology: the new unity

(Revised Bauhaus slogan)

26

to reALLY reform tYPe, NeW

tecHNoLoGY NeeDS to form

tHe BASIS (PHotoGrAPHY, fILm,

PHotoeNGrAvING AND eLetroPLAtING

tecHNIqueS)

27

Photography was the means to a whole new way of seeing, it augmented sight.

28

PHotoGrAm

cameraless photography

29

“ Everyone will be compelled to see objectively the optically true, which is explicable in its own terms, before he can generally arrive at a subjective position.”

—Moholy-Nagy

30

photogram

photoplastic

typofoto

reality photographs

A WAY of commuNIcAtING uNIverSAL trutHeS tHrouGH A WHoLe NeW SeNSorY PerSPectIve

31

moholy-Nagy, Painting Photography Film (cover) 1925

32

moholy-Nagy, Painting Photography Film 1925

33

tYPoPHoto

the combination of photographs and typography (in book and advertising layouts).

34

“ The form, the rendering, is constructed out of the optical and associative relationships: into a visual, associative, conceptual, synthetic continuity: into the typophoto as an unambigu-ous rendering in an optically valid form.”

35

“ the hygiene of the optical, the health of the visible is slowly filtering through”

—Moholy-Nagy

36

communication >> typography >> person

37

comm/typography >> person

38

moholy-Nagy, Bauhaus Book 14 1925

39

moholy-Nagy, Bauhaus Books 1925

40

moholy-Nagy, Bauhaus Books 1925

41

moholy-Nagy, Der Stuh Neue typografie 1929

42

moholy-Nagy, light-space modulator 1925

43

moholy-Nagy, Staatliches Bauhaus (cover) 1923

44

In 1933, the Nazis close the Bauhaus.

In 1937, Moholy-Nagy leaves for Chicago to start the New Bauhaus.

.

45

In 1933, the Nazis close the Bauhaus.

In 1937, Moholy-Nagy leaves for Chicago to start the New Bauhaus.

.

46

What do people now associate with the Bauhaus? What do you associate?

Did the work created at the Bauhaus fulfill the avant-garde goal of art that was accessible to all?