The Bauhausian Effect (Late)

There is nothing like a devastating war to cause change. After the end of the first World War, a sudden explosion of creativity began in Germany. Walter Gropius, one of the most important designers of his time, had the vision to create a place where designers, architects, and artists coalesced to form a bastion of fine and technical arts.  This was called the Bauhaus, a school located in Weimar, Germany that elevated the language of design and catalyzed the change that has lead to the visual communication we see today.  The main ideas of the Bauhaus were a universality in visual language, asymmetrical balance, and the importance of form following function.

            Unlike most other movements prior or during the rise of the Bauhaus (i.e., Dutch De Stijl, Russian Constructivism, Art Nouveau, Pictorial Modernism, Dada, etc), Bauhaus did not have a singular style that was qualitative of the school. Much like European Modernism and Postmodernism, Bauhaus sought only to create striking works that served a purpose; thus many of the artists that studied and created during this time had varying styles.  This is seen from the many artists who enrolled in the school, which includes women designers.

Schmidt. Exhibition Poster. 1923.

            One of the reasons why it has become one of the most, if not the most, important and influential movements is that form begetting function was its crux.  The amalgam of different avenues of design (graphic, industrial, product, etc) allowed for creators to think about production and the importance of putting function first. This revolutionized design because it unified the artist as a creator and distributor. Moreover, Bauhausian style placed a high importance on the use of circles, squares, and triangles as design modules. This allowed for the perpetuation of the universal language investigation.

Matthew D. Jones. AG Ideas. 2006.

            The impact of the Bauhaus movement is seen in many aspects of design today. The consideration of mass production, high quality design, and order is something nearly crucial for every company and corporation today. However, in the microcosm of design, Bauhaus has directly and indirectly inspired designers and design styles for nearly a century. For example, AG Ideas by Matthew D. Jones is a direct product of Schmidt’s exhibition poster of 1923. Not only that, but the Obama campaign (which overall had a wonderful design campaign) used several Bauhausian traits in its design and trademarks.

            Essentially, the Bauhaus is one of the most important design movements to occur in the last 100 years. Its context and methodology continues to inspire designers and artists to this day. In place where chaos and insanity are rampant, much like the unstable German society of the 1920’s and 1930’s, the orderly and sharp characteristics of Bauhausian art and design are a breath of fresh yet familiar air.

WORKS CITED

Meggs, Phillip B. Megg's History of Graphic Design. Fifth ed. Hoboken: Wiley, 2012. Print.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/08/02/bauhaus-ninety-years-of-inspiration/

Matthew D. Jones's DevArt

Angels, Tomboys, and the In-Between (Late)

Women and art is a very interesting combination, because there are such varying, even conflicting, portrayals of the female form and gender.  The Newark Museum’s Angels and Tomboys: Girlhood in Nineteenth Century American Art, a current exhibit, focuses on the depiction of women in the 1800s. During this time period, and well into later centuries, women were generally painted for the male gaze, making these representations women as supplementary to the male figure or an object for them.  The exhibit focuses on these representations as a way to understand the female identity and its relation to (or rather manifestation through) art.

Abott Henderson Thayer. Angel. 1887.

            Abott Handerson Thayer, an American artist from New England, is displayed in the exhibit. In the same spirit of his contemporaries, Thayer sought recognition through his art and employed several naturalistic characteristics of artists at the time. His main subject matter was, oddly enough, angels. Although his contemporaries focused on less fantastical paintings, Thayer was deeply affected by his marriage to his wife, Kate. After her father’s death, she suffered from an intense fall into depression, or what they called melancholia in his day. Relocating to rural New Hampshire in the efforts to treat his wife and avoid the spread of tuberculosis, which festered in urban areas like a plague.

In his painting titled Angel, Thayer depicts a seemingly beautiful but very solemn female figure.  In order to understand the tragically sublime reality of this painting, it is important to be aware of Thayer’s family. He was very close to his wife and children, and the painting is said to be a combination of his wife and eldest daughter. Throughout the creation of the painting, his wife became ill with consumption (what we call tuberculosis today); the disease was also referred as the “angel of death” due to its incurable and lethal reputation. The painting depicts a young female, innocent in nature, with chalky white skin and ethereal wings, robes, and features. It is a representation of his daughter’s innocence, his wife’s frailty, and his attachment to them.

Pablo Picasso. Three Women at the Spring. 1921.

In contrast, Pablo Picasso depicted women in a very different way.  In Three Women at the Spring, he depicted three women in classical garb. However, his painting was far from classical; as a reaction to elite French standards of art, he painted his subject in highly geometric style. Although referring to antiquity in the painting, his highly stylistic representation of these women flirt with his Cubist tendencies. The heaviness of their clothes, bodies, and structures overall give them a monumental quality, all the while showing them in their own environment and existing inside of their own reality. The idea of gender is involved, but not in the sense which other artists involved it.  Picasso is truly showing the meaning of Modernism as a reaction to the classical ideals of French art.

The depictions of the female in both of these pieces are unique to the respective artist’s prerogative and their environment at the time. Although painted by males, Thayer’s is clearly painted for the male gaze and Picasso’s exists outside of that. Essentially, the representation of gender was individual to the artist not necessarily the time period. Throughout the Impressionist era, there were several artists that painted women in relation to men but there were artists like Cassat who did otherwise.  In the case of Thayer and Picasso, women are subject matter and the identity of the women in their paintings is a culmination of their relationship to them and their relationship to society.

Works Cited

Hunter, Sam, John Jacobs, and Daniel Wheeler. Modern Art. New York: Prentice Hall PTR, 2004. Print.

Newark Museum. Angels & Tomboys: Girlhood in 19^th- Century American Art. Newark: Newark Museum, 2012.

http://www.newarkmuseum.org/

Bauhaus

At the crossroads of the 19th and 20th century, there were a few major influences that guided the society and art of that time. By the middle of the 15th century, the Industrial Revolution brought a new page of modernity with steel and iron work. This introduced many new materials and building techniques for architects, builders, and thinkers alike to work with. Another strong body of influence was the burdensome weight of war: World War I. With volatile tensions, come volatile reactions; namely, the rapid emergence of revolutions. As the war began to dissolve, the repercussions gave rise to a new direction in art.
When the German monarchy extracted its influence from Western Europe, the ban on censorship allowed many artists to deal with the ethos that war left in its wake. At the same time, artists were embracing the refreshing controversies and innovations of art eras like that of De Stijl and Constructivism. Thus, the school of Bauhaus was founded and helmed by Walter Gropius. In Dessau, Germany; fine artists, architects, and craftspeople gathered at the school to shape the teachings of Bauhaus that is heavily influenced by modernism. Does mass production clash with the painstaking efforts of fine art? Does form follow function or does function trump form? Is there a proper model of art?
To this day, the aforementioned questions are still up for debate and perceptive contention. The school of Bauhaus was not collected under one specific style. Often times, the work that was being produced and works that are being influenced could be described by similar characteristics. Colors, lines, and shapes were pared down to their basic and true form. For example, the revival of Gothic architecture introduced many buildings that were form-dependent; the design of the Gothic era was skeletal and linear and heavily embellished with ornaments. Architectural plans of Bauhaus showcased the cleanliness of ninety degree angles and a solid veneer of primary colors. While one is more intricate than the other, both examples of artistic development pack the same punch.
One of the many reasons why Bauhaus is still present in contemporary work is because of the school's ability to blur the class lines. Introducing fine art that can be mass produced will without a doubt, cause contempt and respect from both ends of the spectrum. Le Corbusier, an architect of the Bauhaus school, built beautiful chairs that resembled both homely comfort and the lofty energy of modern architecture. The horizontal and vertical steel bars hug the plush black cushion— the design seems simple and so it is subject to mass production. And like how gems are passed around a party viva voce, the influence of Bauhaus reaches so far because of its availability and relatability.

Post 3 (Late)

The depiction of women in art can vary and has varied at times and at the Newark Museums " Angels & Tomboys: Girlhood in 19th-Century American Art" we see women depicted in art from the nineteenth century. In the ninteenth century depending if it were a male artist or female artist women could be depicted in a few ways, but mainly either vulnerable and dependent or second to the man or male figure as if dependent on them in some cases. Paintings of women during this time in the impressionism era that were done by men had this sort of quality to them when it came to depiction and also most of the artists were men as well. On the other hand there were a few women artists such as Mary Cassatt who portrayed women in a totally different light where they were the focal points of the painting and were in control and positioned in the foreground rather then there male counterparts, if there even were any in a particular painting. Although not all painters of the nineteenth century depicted women in a subdued manner. At times they were shown there vulnerability and showed them at leisure.

William Merrit Chase was a painter of the nineteenth century who was very successful and had paintings that showcased women in different ways as well. One of these paintings by William Merritt Chase is entitled, " Idle Hours" 1894. In this painting we see Chase's depiction his family (two daughters and wife) at leisure on the beach. He uses the impressionists technique of painting in "an plein air" as well. In it we see that the women are at leisure and relaxing in an innocent manner and that they are carefree. They are in the left to center foreground dressed in white mostly and at ease with one of the girls off to the right closer to the water. This piece shows a landscaped impressionist painting with texture and use of light that depicts a very warm positive leisurely moment in the girls life.

When it comes to modernism and the paintings and movements of that time being Early to mid twentieth century we can see that the depiction of women has dramatically changed when it comes to form, composition, and also different roles of women and how they relate to each other. In the case of the movement cubism, Pablo Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon "1907 we see a completely new approach in not only the depiction of the female, but also the form and style all together, totally new and groundbreaking in depiction. In this piece which is the early stage of cubism, Picasso abandons all the formally taught perspectives of 3-d perspective, proportion, and uses distortion and influences of primitive cultural art works such as african masks to use in this piece.

In it he depicts five female nude prostitues from a brothel in Barcelona, Spain. With flat 2-d planes and its primitiveness, Picasso depicts the female in a very aggresive hostile light with there skin not seeming soft and with sharp edges and points almost as if they are untouchable and very uninviting in contrast to what the impressionists of the nineteenth century had portrayed women, in particular in William Merrit Chases' "Idle Hours". In this contrast we truly see why it is modernism is the  breaking away from classical and traditional forms. William Merritt Chase upholds to the traditional depictions of women in the impressionism movement whereas Picasso abandons the traditional techniques and also the traditional depictions of women and reinvents it all in a groundbreaking and monumental modernist way.

William Merritt Chase. Idle Hours. 1894

Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. 1907

Works Cited

Hunter, Sam, John Jacobs, and Daniel Wheeler. Modern Art. New York: Prentice Hall PTR, 2004. Print.

Newark Museum. Angels & Tomboys: Girlhood in 19^th- Century American Art. Newark: Newark Museum, 2012.

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