Many groups and individuals have influenced design in the world of Advertising, from William Morris and his Arts and Crafts style to Jules Cheret and Art Nouveau. However, arguably no entity has been as influential to modern design as the collective known as the Bauhaus.
The Bauhaus was formed in 1919 by German architect Walter Gropius with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier in Weimar, Germany. Although the Bauhaus was founded by an architect, it did not actually have architecture department during its early years. Instead, Gropius wanted to focus on a study of art that would eventually encompass many different aspects of locations. They had a school Weimar, one in Dessau and one in Berlin. The schools were shut down by Hitler when he came into power in 1933.
The schools formation came during a time of revolution in Germany, after the fall of the German Monarchy which followed World War I. Prior to the fall of the monarchy the German people were subject to much stricter censorship rules which limited the creative freedom of German designers such as Walter Gropius. As a result, many designers began experimenting with what were considered very radical ideas at the time.
One of the major contributions of the Bauhaus was to the modernist movement. They were influenced by the modernist movement which was developing in the West at the time. The modernism movement started in the late 19th century in the United States with the help of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The Bauhaus would later go on to become the most influential force of the era in modern design.
Modernism moved away from the ornate and complex styles of Victorian art and other styles, to a simpler and cleaner look which is popular in the corporate world today. It rejected conservative ideals of realism which were dominant before. Creatively, before this time designers and artists focused on creating images which were accurate and realistic in nature, confined by the perceptions of reality.
Bauhaus approach to teaching, and understanding art's relationship to society and technology, had a major impact both in Europe and the United States long after it closed. It was shaped by the 19th and early 20th centuries trends such as Arts and Crafts movement, which had sought to level the distinction between fine and applied arts, and to reunite creativity and manufacturing. This is reflected in the romantic medievalism of the school's early years, in which it pictured itself as a kind of medieval crafts guild. But in the mid-1920s the medievalism gave way to a stress on uniting art and industrial design, and it was this which ultimately proved to be its most original and important achievement. The school is also renowned for its faculty, which included artists Wassily Kandinsky, Josef Albers, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee andJohannes Itten, architects Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and designer Marcel Breuer.
- The motivations behind the creation of the Bauhaus lay in the 19th century, in anxieties about the soullessness of manufacturing and its products, and in fears about art's loss of purpose in society. Creativity and manufacturing were drifting apart, and the Bauhaus aimed to unite them once again, rejuvenating design for everyday life.
- · Although the Bauhaus abandoned much of the characteristic of the old academic tradition of fine art education, it maintained a stress on intellectual and theoretical pursuits, and linked these to an emphasis on practical skills, crafts and techniques that was more similar to the medieval guild system. Fine art and craft were brought together with the goal of problem solving for a modern industrial society. In so doing, the Bauhaus effectively leveled the old scale of the arts, placing crafts on par with fine arts such as sculpture and painting, and paving the way for many of the ideas that have inspired artists in the late 20th century.
- · The stress on experiment and problem solving at the Bauhaus has proved enormously influential for the approaches to education in the arts. It has led to the 'fine arts' being rethought as the 'visual arts', and art considered less as an adjunct of the humanities, like literature or history, and more as a kind of research science.
References
1. UK Essays. November 2013. Influence Of The Bauhaus On Design Cultural Studies Essay. [online]. Available from: http://www.ukessays.com/essays/cultural-studies/influence-of-the-bauhaus-on-design-cultural-studies-essay.php?cref=1 [Accessed 20 June 2015].
2. Griffith Winton, Alexandra. August 2007. "The Bauhaus, 1919–1933". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. Available from: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bauh/hd_bauh.htm
3. Graphic Design History (2011) ‘Thethree locations of Bauhaus'. Available at: http://www.designhistory.org/Bauhaus_pages/BauhausLocations.html
4. The Art Story (2015) 'Bauhaus’. Available at: http://www.theartstory.org/movement-bauhaus.htm
