Post 4

The Bauhaus, "house of building" was a design school based in Germany founded by Walter Gropius and was the most significantly important influence in design. It combined the arts &crafts and all other styles of design that were previous and present and incorporated them into their teachings. They took the best from all the movements and created a dynamic approach to design teaching and design itself. The Bauhaus was greatly influenced by the previous arts & crafts movement as well as the Glasgow School, Art Noveau, Art Deco, Dejstill,  and constructivism. All of this condensed brought about the great designs that came out of the Bauhaus as well as the following teaching of form follows function which is extremely prevelent and important. What has been created or designed should have a functioning aspect that works. A reason behind something, why it is created and designed has a function to it. The Bauhaus also went through its own phases as well with the early phase being more of medievel craftsmanship and its late phase of new unity of art & technology. This is why it is to this day the single most important movement to design.


 Henri van de Velde was getting ready to resign as head of the Weimer Arts & crafts school and had recommended Walter Gropius to replace him as head of the school (which would later be renamed  Das Staatliche Bauhaus) or the Bauhaus. Walter Gropius was already well known for his designs in factory designs using glass and steel in new and improved ways(Meggs 328). Gropius was groundbreaking in finding a new unity of art & technology as mentioned. The teachers at the Bauhaus were also a dynamic factor as well in establishing there groundbreaking design unifying approaches with unity and technology.(Meggs 326
). One of these teachers was Lazlo Moholy-Nagy. Lazlo was a hungarian constructivist who studied law before getting into the arts and the Bauhaus and was exploring painting, sculpture, photography, film, and graphic design. (Meggs 328). He dabbled in new techniques in photomontage and the photogram, as well as kinetic motion and light which led to groundbreaking design and still influence design today in America and all over the world. In Lazlo Moholy-Nagy's photograms he uses light and the light becomes a medium for design and form which was way ahead of its time. Experimenting with these different mediums and in photography led to new and advanced design methods.

Some of the works we see that came out of the Bauhaus can be clearly seen as have been influenced by movements like Dutch Dejstill and russian constructivism. This is the case in Herbert Bayer when he designed the symbol for the Kraus stained glass workshop in 1923. The symbol is geometrically correct and has straight black lines and squares and rectangles that create a balance. In this symbol we can clearly see the influence of Dutch-Dejstill and mondrian's "Composition in red, yellow blue and black" 1921 with the same sort of straight black lines that create squares and rectangles but in mondrian's incorporates a balance of color with the red, yellow, and blue.These influences and unification of art & technology with all the movements from Europe and other areas made for the Bauhaus and its great influence that we see even to this day. Typography, furniture design, and graphic design even to this day are influenced by the Bauhaus even after being closed for over seventy years ago.

Case in point Joost schmidt's "Bauhaus Exhibition Poster" 1923 still has a great influence on design today. This poster combines Dejstill, cubism, and constructivism which shows evidence that the Bauhaus became a vessel in which diverse movements were melded into new design approaches (Meggs 328). Here we have two examples of modern day poster designs that were clearly influenced by the Bauhaus. Composition wise are very much influenced with the placement of the shapes and text and also the use of space.

Joost Schmidt Bauhaus Exhibition Poster 1923

Modern day poster

Modern day poster

Works Cited

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

www.smashingmagazine.com/.../bauhaus-ninety-years-of-inspiration/    

More Bauhaus inspired works