At the weekend I paid a visit to the Bauhaus exhibition at the Barbican, probably the biggest exhibition solely dedicated to the pioneering German art and design school in recent history, and a substantial delve into the school’s turbulent pathway from 1919 to its final closure in 1933. This is a vast exhibition, with over 400 works; starting with ceramics and textiles from the school’s arts and crafts beginnings, to Bauhaus’s move in 1925 to the industrial city of Dessau and a purpose-built campus designed by founder Walter Gropius. The exhibition design, by architects Carmody Groarke, guides you chronologically through the works, revealing not only the huge output of works; buildings, painting, sculptures, but also life backstage at Bauhaus, with black and white photographs of the studios and revealing images of the students and professors. ‘The freedom from all conventions to liberate their creative potential” carries through their way of living as well; a playful portrait marks a case in point- Marcel Breuer standing next to three delectable ladies with the title of ‘Marcel Breuer and his harem’. Another room documents Josef Albers’ simple but delicate preliminary course for his students, whilst another portrays the school’s parties, including one ‘white party’ in which everyone was instructed to appear in costume ‘2/3 white 1/3 dotted, chequered and striped’ and dance to the music of bells, eerily played through the exhibition space.
This exhibition is primarily for the design conscious, but even if you are a Bauhaus novice, it provides a jam-packed educational road through a school thought to be the driving force in modernism. Bauhaus: Art as Life on at the Barbican Art Gallery 3rd May 2012 till the 12 August 2012, standard ticket £12, concessions £8.
Back cover of the brochure Bauhaus, 1929 by Hannes Meyer
Stone sculpture workshop, 1923
Work by Farkas Molnar (above) and Alexander (Sandor) Bortnyik (below)
Tea infuser by Marianne Brandt
Bauhaus books 1-14, 1925-30
Masters on the roof of the Bauhaus building, 1926.
Children on the balustrade of a master’s house, 1927
Students on a balcony at the Prellerhaus, 1932
The jump over the Bauhaus by T. Lux Feininger
Marcel Breuer and his Harem, 1927 taken by Erich Consemuller
Portrait of Ellen Frank by Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, 1929
Gunter Hirschel-Protsch, The Olympic Master Cactus, 1929
Exercise from Josef Albers’s preliminary course 1929-30
Neue Sachlichkeit Party, 1925
Images my own taken from the accompanying catalogue Bauhaus: art as life.
