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Paint Along with Nancy (1970s)

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Bob Ross - Island in the Wilderness (Season 29 Episode 1)

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SAAG | Group Show - The Last Art College: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1968-1978

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John Baldessari, I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art, 1971.

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NSCAD sample works

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Frederick A. Horowitz

Josef Albers was at the center of things at Black Mountain College from the time he arrived in 1933 to his departure in 1949. His were the courses you took, whether or not you intended to continue studying art. Although he knew practically no English when he arrived, he hit the ground running, transplanting to Lee Hall the design and drawing courses he'd taught at the Bauhaus, and initiating his now classic course in color. A basic painting course would come later. So powerful was Albers's influence on the nature of the school that many people today assume that Black Mountain College was a school of art.

Much of what Albers brought from the Bauhaus was congenial to Black Mountain College: The principles of "practice before theory," "learning by doing," and "study, not art"; the dissolution of the hierarchy that elevated fine arts above everything else; recognizing that art is an experience rather than a commodity. Less widely considered are the ways that Black Mountain College shaped Albers and his teaching. This paper will investigate those ways.

The Bauhaus was a training school for professionals; Black Mountain College was a school of general studies. At Black Mountain College, Albers shifted his objectives from teaching professional skills to teaching the whole person. He was confident that he could improve anyone's life by exposing that person to visual training, and welcomed John Dewey's then-novel assertion that art should be integrated into the general curriculum. As a consequence of his work with young, non-professionals, he began increasingly to emphasize thinking for oneself as a primary goal of his teaching.

The unique character of Black Mountain College also shaped Albers's teaching. The poverty of the school forced Albers and his students to improvise. In Lee Hall, where sufficient chairs were lacking, Albers and his students worked on the floor in an atmosphere of playful informality. Their having to rely on cheap and discarded materials encouraged Albers's students to experiment and take risks, took the preciousness out of art, and underscored the idea that this was study, not art. Not having grades-a principle of the school-also encouraged freedom and experimentation. The surroundings of the college provided autumn leaves that found their way into Albers's color course. The abundance of natural materials encouraged Albers to expand studies of texture in the basic design course.

But it was the intense hothouse climate of Black Mountain College, with its inescapable, ongoing topic of social norms and expectations, of individual rights versus community obligations, that produced the most remarkable effect on Albers's teaching. This paper will show that, in response to the communal character of the college, Albers's lessons in art came to articulate unmistakable social, political, and moral values.

Asked by a student upon his arrival at the College, "What are you going to teach?" Albers famously replied, "To open eyes." He would repeat this statement of objectives often in his lectures and writings. Central to Albers's teaching was the teaching of visual perception, and central to that was his emphasis on formal relationships. He was aware that relationships, especially the left-overs-the background or neighboring spaces-often went unnoticed, as demonstrated by the Gestaltists in their well-known goblet and profile illusion. Look at the goblet, and you miss seeing the profiles. Look at the profiles, and you miss the goblet.

Albers was intrigued by fluctuating figure-ground patterns, such as one finds in pre-Columbian designs and in the so-called "Greek meander." In his basic design course he challenged students to create fluctuating patterns of black and white, thereby teaching them to be aware that the leftover spaces were as crucial to the design as the black shapes.

As Albers saw it, formal relationships between the elements determined whether a composition "worked" or not. Therefore, to teach perception meant, in great part, to sensitize students to the formal relationships that they would otherwise likely overlook.

These lessons played out in Albers's assignments in every course. Fluctuating figure-ground patterns taught that every element counts, and that there's one place where everything comes right. Free-hand drawings of the meander and other designs taught that every line creates a shape to either side, and relates to every other line on the page. Constructing abstract forms with wire or paper taught that the so-called leftover spaces must be made active agents in the piece. Similarly, the painting course demanded that the white ground be incorporated into the painting, appearing as both volume and space. Using direct application of watercolor, as in the paintings of Cézanne, reiterated the lesson that every mark affects every other mark on the paper. The color course was entirely about relationships. Its many prescribed exercises and abstract color collages-the "free studies"-taught the many ways that colors influence one another and come alive in relationship with other colors.

In his crits of the results, Albers conceived of talking about the formal elements as though they were living creatures. Lines, shapes, colors, and materials "should know about each other," they "should pay attention to each other." Eventually, he linked the interactions of these elements to human interaction. Lines, shapes, and colors "should not exist for themselves," they should learn to "cooperate;" "should integrate," "should get along," "they should help each other," or as he told one class, "they should support each other, not kill each other." In this way he impressed upon his students the reality of the forces inherent in the formal elements as they appear in the percept. Lines, shapes, and color actually behave [italics]. Simultaneously, he impressed upon his students the parallel he found between the behavior of the formal elements and human, social behavior.

Carrying his ideas about relationships further, Albers developed his unique concept of "respect." He'd say: "Respect the other material, or color-or your neighbor. Respect the one you weren't paying attention to." Persistently and emphatically, in crits, classroom admonishments, and in writing, Albers emphasized that respect for the other was the sine qua non on every level of life, art, and education. A student's course notes record his telling one class, "Respect is the parallel between art and life." Another student recalled: "I don't think there was one comment he made pertaining to the visual world that he didn't intend to pertain to the human world. He told us over and over that there is no meaning to teaching art unless it is a teaching for how to live your life. This was not a little side note. It was fundamental to his teaching."

That Black Mountain College was a small, compact community as well as a school exerted perhaps the greatest impact on Albers and his teaching, leading him to recognize that the formal lessons he brought to his courses could be applied to life, as well. Central to his teaching was the teaching of perception, especially of the relationships between elements in the visual field. Linking the behavior of formal elements to the behavior of people, he developed his distinctive concept of "respect": for the other color, material, or shape-or for one's neighbor. Lessons learned from formal behavior-balance, proportion, relationships-could be applied to human behavior, and vice-versa. Lessons for life increasingly suffused his teaching, as he argued that a sound education meant learning to balance respect for other people with the obligation to think for oneself. The moral component of Albers's teaching, typically overlooked in accounts of his teaching, was immensely important to him. Through this extraordinary leap of the imagination, Albers reconciled the demands of art training with the social imperatives imposed on individuals sharing the small, ever-boiling community that was Black Mountain College.

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What Josef Albers Taught at Black Mountain College, and What Black Mountain College Taught Albers by Frederick A. Horowitz - BMCS

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Blake Hobby, Alessandro Porco, and team bring you The Journal of Black Mountain College Studies, an online publication of the Black Mountain College Museum+Arts Center. Alice Sebrell, Mary Emma Harris, Brian Butler, The Arts at Black Mountain College. Midcentury experimental art, music, literature, and crafts, with historical and scholarly information on one of America's experimental colleges.

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BMC student matière studies, 1940s.

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Charles Olson, Plan for the operation of Black Mountain College after 1956.

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Susan Wells, Secrets, 1949.

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1933-57

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Hello Andrew, this is a present for you and your living room visitors from Conor. Hope you have fun playing Albers' Squares :-) (You click on the green flag to launch the game)

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When the Town and Country Planning Association entered the classroom, 1982

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Journal of Geography in Higher Education

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An excellent and righteous summary of the issues involved in the current neoliberal dismantling of British art schools.

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On 20th Feb (last Thursday :) ) UCU, the University and College Union, began 14 days of strike action, in which 74 universities across the UK are participating. In London specifically, the 4 big art schools are participating: the Royal College of Art, University of the Arts London (Central St Martins, Chelsea, Camberwell, Wimbledon, London College of Communication etc), Goldsmiths & (the Slade/Bartlett). I'm sure you've all seen something about this on twitter or instagram, but I think I want to use this moment to stop, take stock and think about the state of art schools, their slow dismantling, what these strikes mean in a wider context, and how this affects the art world we find ourselves in now. These strikes are a big deal, imo, because this is the first time casualisation has been on the official list of concerns; the importance of that is massive, especially from my perspective as an art worker/creative labourer working in London. Since well before the Tory government's introduction of £9k+ tuition fees, we've slowly seen the dismantling of the art school, but since 2012 there has been a full-scale rush towards a transition from art school to arts university. What does this marketisation of teaching mean, what does it represent, and what's being done about it? I spoke to a source in one of London's art schools about the strikes, about the disputes and their experience of the sector within their respective university. The university they work for will become apparent throughout the text, but obviously I can't name them or the institution they work for. I have attributed problems to specific universities where possible, but for some instances, that has not been possible. For complete clarity, this strike and the 4 disputes at its centre are definitely about sector-wide problems, transcending art schools and representing a problem in higher education at large. Poor working conditions are not specific to any one institution, they just happen to be the examples I have access to.

This strike specifically is centred around a dispute that has been in ongoing negotiation between UCU and UCEA (Universities and Colleges Employers Association - the lobbying body for the universities themselves, their union if u like) since July 2019; it's the second wave following the walkouts in November/December last year. The last strike action was centred on pay & pensions, this year's strike is more comprehensive; it's the first time UCU has campaigned about or around casualisation. Casualisation is the transformation of a workforce from one employed primarily on permanent contracts (with access to all our country's full-spectrum of employment rights) to one primarily engaged on a short-term or casual basis (this includes the use of zero-hour contracts). Casual employment is characterised by its precarity for the worker, and the unilateral power it affords employers. It's a significant component in the neoliberal restructuring of our economy that is currently unfolding. At present, more teaching staff in art skls than ever before are on insecure, casual, zero-hours or other kinds of insecure contracts. Beyond art schools, in universities at large, 54% of all academic staff and 49% of all academic teaching staff are on insecure contracts; yet this seems to be a problem that congeals specifically in arts teaching with 90% of teaching staff at the RCA employed on zero-hours/other insecure contracts (the highest in the country according to the Precarious Work In Higher Education UCU Report 2016), and at UAL more than 2000 teaching staff don't have a secure contract. Staff employed in this way are not automatically entitled to sick pay, maternity pay or annual leave, and can get fired at any time.

In terms of knock-on effect, this precarity represents a slippery slope for working practices. At the RCA there are entire departments where almost everyone is on a zero-hours Visiting Lecturer contract aside from the Head of Department, and the management expects that Visiting Lecturers will come back to teach each year. We know of multiple instances where staff have been made redundant, only to then be re-employed a few weeks before term, but on worse conditions (less pay and fewer rights). Not only is this dickhead behaviour, it's also so that colleges can get away with not having to put these temporary/casual staff members on permanent contracts - which by law they have to do automatically, if temporary staff are doing the same job for more than four years. With power resting almost entirely in the hands of the employer, and a precarious workforce of teaching staff with relatively little in terms of actual tangible material rights, this can only breed an institutional mentality, and subsequently working practices, that treats its workforce as disposable. If you drop out of this mad rat race, there is a fresh crop of MA graduates from the university's own ranks able to fill the gap. For time, teaching has been a stable source of income for artists, in a sector that is renowned for not providing meaningful or consistent income from exhibition or practice. With the wider sector not providing any alternative from this, this casualisation in art schools represents a significant erosion of what was once a stable provision of employment in the arts. I cannot stress or emphasise this enough, almost every artist I know that's making a living outta this thing, is a teacher as well. It is a stable source of income, the primary source of income, for so many practitioners that are exhibiting in galleries, touring shows, international biennials, turner prize winners.

Beyond casualisation, there are 3 other central disputes: workloads, falling pay, and the gender & ethnicity gap. The dispute about workloads is that they are unsafe; currently staff are doing a lot more than what they're paid for, this is of course bound to the casualisation of labour. Not only are staff, being asked to work harder and for longer than ever before (the average working week in higher education is now above 50 hours, with 29% of academics averaging more than 55 hours), they're not being paid for this increased workload - the 100,000+ teaching staff on casual contracts in the sector report that they are only paid for 55% of the work they do. On average, across the sector, tutors and lecturers are doing 2 days of unpaid work every single week. This is unsustainable, unethical, and fucking ridiculous. These are invisible hours, filled with unpaid work that's being foisted on a workforce that is clearly already too precarious to refuse these increasing workloads. It does nothing other than serve the management and the employer, line their pockets with profits that are directly extracted from the teachers and students both - in higher fees and lower wages.

These increased workloads are a problem directly attached to the 3rd dispute of falling pay. Since 2009, university lecturers' pay has been effectively cut by nearly 20% in real terms, this is worse for Visiting Lecturers who do not receive any pay increments each year. If you're an associate lecturer, you don't get a pay rise in line with inflation automatically; you have to wait until the general rate is raised. There were no raises to the general rate between 2013-18. For 5 years that just wasn't addressed until the union pushed for it to be reviewed. It also represents a wider problem, of wages not being adjusted to meet living costs or to accurately reflect the labour being done; at the RCA alone, visiting lecturer rates weren't reviewed for 5 years, and when they were, lecturers still weren't paid for prep time. Beyond not being paid for prep time (which is not necessarily a consistent failure throughout the sector, it seems to be specific to the RCA) there is still the wider and vaguer problem of irregularity in workloads. We know about cases of lecturers in senior positions, like a Head of Department, leaving, and then the remaining colleagues would be asked to fill the gaps of the Head of Department job, but the college would not give them extra pay - anecdotally, almost all these stories came from women. These 2 disputes are inextricably linked, and inextricably destructive.

It in no way benefits students to have teaching staff that's run ragged, and underpaid, and unable to adequately support them because of this overworking. UCU's own research showed that 42% of staff on casual contracts have struggled to pay household bills; I don't know how anyone can be expected to deliver the highest possible standard of teaching, engage meaningfully with their students, or even just support their students with any kind of dedication and focus, when they're genuinely worried about putting food on the table and keeping a fucking roof over their heads. Falling pay, unsustainable workloads, and a precarious workforce on casual contracts without any meaningful access to the employment rights of a proper contract; these are not the characteristics of an education system geared towards meeting the needs of students. All this does is turn art schools into profit-making enterprises; where the students are customers, the tutors are haggard workers and the bosses are laughing their way to the bank. It does not prioritise students and what they need over that 3/4 year period of being at art school, it does not nurture them and hand them the tools they need to be successful practitioners in their field when they leave. It normalises a mode of working that is reflected in the wider sector: of exploitative working conditions where your position as an employee is legally pretty shaky, where your employer has all the power over the terms of your engagement with them, and where you're paid buttons to do the work of at least 2 people, just so you can scrape by in our nation's great capital where living costs are soaring and people are struggling to break even every month. That's what this system teaches students: this is what to expect, welcome to neoliberalism.

The 4th dispute over the gender and ethnicity pay gap is maddening to me. The universities' own analysis highlights that women and black and minority ethnic staff experience significant pay discrimination - at the RCA the gender pay gap rose 10% last year. It also reflects a wider madness with regards to ~diversity & inclusion~ within the sector: by the RCA's own admission in their 2018/19 Equality & Diversity report, 'Amongst applicants for jobs at the RCA in 2017 29% of applicants for roles were BME and 65% are white yet around 20% of shortlisted applicants are BME and 17% of appointed candidates are BME. White applicants were almost twice as likely to be appointed to an RCA role than a BME applicant'. Yet somehow this pretty harrowing admission doesn't appear to be being followed up with sincere consideration of the problem; the same diversity report holds some pretty frustratingly vague statistics regarding % of BME staff in the workforce from 2014 - 2019, a break down [] of full time academic staff, part time academic staff and NO CLARITY on where staff on precarious/zero-hours contracts, as Visiting Lecturers or otherwise, sit within that - we can only assume the reporting is only talking about contracted staff, as almost all staff at the RCA are part-time. A source has told us that they don't collect data on Visiting Lecturers at all, despite the fact they make up 90% of their teaching staff, so this admission and the following provision of stats feels markedly like an ~ALLEGED~ smokescreen, pulled out of their literal bumholes. Art schools proclaim themselves to be strongholds of progressive, radical thought and action, perhaps implicitly more than explicitly nowadays. This being an issue might not be surprising news for most, but it is at odds with the optics of their own marketing. On this specific point, I am just tired. Too tired to say again what the impact of this will be if not checked with the sincerity and seriousness it needs. You all know what the effect of an all-white teaching staff is, what the effect of an institutionally racist hiring system in art schools is. If teaching is such a significant and stable source of income to practitioners, and POC are prevented from access to that stable source of income because of racist hiring practices, you know what that'll do. I'm fucking tired man, you do the work, you know what I'd say.

Obviously, the impact of these working conditions leak out into the wider arts sector, as they are felt most outside of these universities by artists/creative labourers that teach while maintaining a practice. However, all this mess also leaves an obvious and significant impact on students. The strike action is pinned around the wider marketisation of arts teaching, something that has most definitely impacted art students' experience of university, and the teaching they receive. Across UAL, the RCA, Goldsmiths and the Slade, the reporting has been the same: staff numbers have been at standstill despite increasing numbers of students, reduced contact time with the increasing number students, a lack of dedicated studio spaces, workshop facilities being booked up for weeks on end with large numbers of students unable to get access, art and design students in bigger universities not having priority to specialist workshop facilities because the photography studio (for example) is open to non-art students as well. Beyond BA & MA, we know of PhD supervisors with 13 PhD students. UCL and Imperial College suggest that full time staff have no more than 6 PhD students at any one time, so this represents a doubling of recommended numbers. Considering students are currently paying more than £9,000 a year for their education, at BA level alone, if we were to think about this in the purely transactional terms this system seems to love, this is an astonishingly bad deal. Art school is becoming a more and more untenable pursuit, in an industry where those 3/4 years of Foundation and BFA are widely declared as absolutely ESSENTIAL to inclusion within it. In an art world that places so much value and importance on the pipeline from Academy to Institution or Gallery, where access is made near on impossible from outside that formal pipeline, no meaningful alternative to it is offered; this marketisation of arts teaching is going to heap yet more straws on the back of a camel that is set to collapse ANY MINUTE NOW. NOT TO BE A FUCKING PESSIMIST, but the arts are already suffocatingly white and middle-class, your success within the arts is already too dependent on having access to existing wealth. This matters, all of this matters; to me, to Gab, to the teachers, tutors, students, and to any potential viewer in 2040 that's going to be sat in a small to mid-size gallery thinking, 'jesus christ, another posh white person making art about fuck all'. Art made by rich people is shit, and with the full-scale neoliberalisation and marketisation of arts education, the arts are going to be overwhelmingly populated by the rich going forward. This problem will only replicate, double down, become harder to unpick.

This has wider ripples that will effect our ability to affect change in an expanded galaxy-brain sense. This is all interconnected. This is urgent. We must support these UCU strikes, so here's what students can do::::
You can write to the Vice-Chancellor/Principal at your uni/art skl, find the UCU website's template email . Work with your Students' Union in support of the fight, co-ordinate action n be noisy. Follow it on twitter/IG n make noise there, and join staff on the picket lines and teach outs if possible. Support as vocally and visibly as you possibly can so that your university knows that you too are concerned about these issues, and students are on side defending decent teaching & learning, that they can't divide & conquer. Help get the word out that these strikes were not inevitable, but caused by the Universities and Colleges Employers Association's refusal to take UCU's demands seriously. If you are a postgraduate you can join UCU for free as a student member. Be understanding that if your lecturers and tutors are on strike they are unlikely to be able to reply to emails as part of the strike - the picket line is digital too. If you do support the action, please be patient and email them after the strike. Above all, support the staff on strike, this isn't ideal for them either. This strike is a last resort to protect the standards of higher education, and the issues under dispute affect both students and staff - they affect us all in wider but still tangible ways. This is important, we cannot lose this fight.

It's now the end of the 2nd week of strike action, we have to make sure the momentum keeps up, and that fundamentally that UCU are able to successfully negotiate and resolve these disputes. With current working conditions the way they are, things are lowkey highkey dire. Pls, let us have one smol smol win.

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On 20th Feb (last Thursday :) ) UCU, the University and College Union, began 14 days of strike action, in which 74 universities across the UK are participating. In London specifically, the 4 big art schools are participating: the Royal College of Art, University of the Arts London (Central St Martins, Chelsea, Camberwell, Wimbledon, London College of Communication etc), Goldsmiths & (the Slade/Bartlett).

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Additional information

Notes

1. Ross, May '68 and its Afterlives (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002) p. 214.

2. Ross, May '68 and its Afterlives p. 25.

3. Oliver, P. 'Art Education for What Future?@ in Piper, D.W. ed. Readings in Art Education [2 volumes] (London, Davis‐Poynter, 1973) pp 136-137, cited in Tickner, Hornsey 1968 p. 53, p.137, n.99.

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1. Ross, May '68 and its Afterlives (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002) p. 214. 2. Ross, May '68 and its Afterlives p. 25. 3. Oliver, P. 'Art Education for What Future?@ in Piper, D.W. ed. Readings in Art Education [2 volumes] (London, Davis‐Poynter, 1973) pp 136-137, cited in Tickner, Hornsey 1968 p.

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HORNSEY 1968: THE ART SCHOOL REVOLUTION BY LISA TICKNER

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First published: Get access to the full version of this article. View access options below. Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials. If you have previously obtained access with your personal account, Please log in. No abstract is available for this article.

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David Cain, BBC Radiophonic Workshop

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BBC Radiophonic Workshop - BBC Radiophonic Music

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Architecture: Works of the Architecture Faculty of VKhUTEMAS, 1920-1927

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Architecture: Works of the Architecture Faculty of VKhUTEMAS, 1920-1927

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El Lissitsky

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Архитектура : Работы Архитектурного факультета Вхутемаса : 1920-1927 : El Lissitzky (Lissitzky, Lazar) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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Обл Л. М. Лисицкого. Фотографии С. Г. Хлыстова. Предисл. П. Новицкого; вст. текст проф. Н....

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Revolutionary Russian art schools.

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Vkhutemas + Bauhaus: On Common Origins, Different Futures, and Creation with Fire

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Designer of the Bauhaus Vorkurs (Basic Course)

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Hans Hofmann, artist-teacher.

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Hi Andrew, here is my present for your living room. I hope you’ll like it - perhaps you know it already? Hilde

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Painting and Sculpture

The modern revolution in the domains of painting and sculpture has led various artists and architects to believe that sculpture and painting are no longer appropriate artistic forms for our time. That is, that these arts are no longer viable forms of expression.

The downfall of classical aesthetics has plunged us into a situation of apparent chaos which requires us to discover new forms of artistic expression capable of accurately expressing the present era.

It is above all in architecture that we sense the impossibility of hanging framed paintings or installing sculptures in niches, and this has led certain people to think that sculpture and painting no longer have a legitimate position within houses constructed for everyday life.

This idea is supported by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, among others, and it is undeniably symbolic that Wright himself, in his old age, ended up building a "seashell" museum [the Guggenheim] in New York where works of art are directly placed in their sepulcher without ever having passed through a role in everyday life.

This same idea has led the writer Dieter Oestreich, in the Swiss architectural journal Werk (#6, 1953), to declare that "it seems impossible for the people of our time to find in sculpture a valid expression; and for the same reason, it seems that painting must be reduced to the pure lines and colors of nonfigurative painting." One might imagine that the term "nonfigurative" here refers to the break from the imitation of nature, but this is not at all the case.

It is a rejection of the existence, the true value and the autonomy of pictorial figuration itself as pure surface effect. Between the two World Wars we witnessed a purging of architecture in the name of purism, and this type of purgation is a historical phenomenon: one can find other examples in the histories of China, Egypt and the Byzantine Empire, and in northern Europe during the Reformation.

This purgation stems from a Calvinist-type spirit, which may be valuable in certain respects in the context of certain historical tasks. But to base ourselves on these same ideas at the present time brings us to the second, reactionary aspect of that spirit.

It is this second aspect that is being manifested today. The first Bauhaus, in Germany, carried out a historical task. In contrast, sticking to those same ideas now leads only to the second aspect (Max Bill's New Bauhaus).

The analytical efforts toward distinction and independence that have preceded our era have liberated and purified a variety of human activities; but this same tendency has today ended up isolating occupations into different types of specialization.

In order to put an end to this sterility, which currently dominates science as well as the arts, it is now more than ever necessary to comprehend the interdependencies and reciprocal influences of all the activities of our culture. To succeed in this we have to find a method of holistic investigation that is applicable to all of these activities.

Architecture is "an art for forming our surrounding milieu"; painting and sculpture are "arts that create images"; but architects must come to understand that images created by man are necessarily and above all imagined. This means that painting must always precede architecture.

In the same way, images are created by ideas, which are directly expressed in words; writers are "artists of words and ideas." Painting finds itself caught in this hostile/complicitous alternative: hostile because of the danger of becoming literary or architectural, complicitous because painting cannot exist without the inspiration of literature and finds itself uprooted if it does not obey the "intrinsic" (architectonic) laws of painting itself.

The poet strives to lead painting to establish itself within the world of signs and symbols. The architect, for his part, strives to dominate painting because the latter supports his formal language; thus, painting seeks to dominate literature and architecture for purely pictorial reasons.

It is by conserving the autonomy of these three arts that one finds, within their mutual rivalries, the creative spirit. The fact that there are tendencies toward isolation among certain painters, as well as among certain writers and architects, is of no particular importance; but if such separation becomes widespread, it may dry up the free flow of creation. Today more than ever this menace exists. It is obviously possible for architects to secretly find a practical value in Arp or Miró (for example) while ignoring their Dadaism and Surrealism except in merely artistic terms. This sleight of hand on the part of architects prevents a rational analysis of the new problems of form, because the stages of the evolution of forms are inconceivable if the imagination does not have a role within the formal research.

This is demonstrated by experience, for apart from a few Italian, American and Scandinavian ventures, architecture has remained fixated on the same old problems and principles for more than thirty years.

The poverty of the painting and sculpture caused by this ignorance can be seen in a very different sense, because it is obvious that the architects themselves have not managed to avoid the use of "images," which have been present in social life since the age of the cave man.

Pictorial effects are inevitable in human ambiences. When architects avoid these effects they are doing nothing but shunting the solution of the problem onto third parties, leaving the latter to come up with some sort of pseudosynthesis, with the disastrous results for homeowners that such procedures invariably entail. In so doing, they are betraying the professional dignity of the artist.

In our individualistic society, each person who owns a home has the right to use its exterior to produce a pictorial effect designed to attract the neighbors' attention. This violation of individual tranquility, commonly referred to as advertising, uses the most primitive, anarchic, brutal and vulgar pictorial means possible.

Artists thus end up being highly paid to create a melange of sounds, lights, colors, images and slogans that will drown out the competition. Architects may pontificate about "city planning," but one can see that that notion is nothing but a farce, because it is clear that none of this is created for the joy or education of the masses.

Le Corbusier says that today buildings are built for profit and not for humanity. He is certainly one of the rare architects of our era who has understood that all the arts and all artistic means must be brought together to create a true ambience, created to the measure of man.

On the Present Value of the Functionalist Idea

The last few years have seen an increasingly great discontent with the rationalist conceptions of Functionalism. There is more and more talk about a revolution against its intolerable constraints, and this revolution seems to be clear and inevitable. But before we throw out the baby with the bath water, we should carefully consider the nature of a real revolution, because such a revolution cannot be brought about by indiscriminate destruction.

We need to conserve what seems to us to be the active element in the heritage of Functionalism. When Functionalism revolted against the old classicism, it proclaimed that "a house is a machine for dwelling," "a kitchen is a machine for nourishing," etc. These arguments triumphed because of their undeniable truth.

The Functionalists created a rational analysis of structure and functions, reducing form to the most economical means for satisfying our needs, and in this way they created an understanding of object and instrument unknown before that time. Beyond this objective functionalism, they claimed to possess a humanistic analysis of the social and ethical functions of our surrounding environment, culminating with a democratic foundation and supported by a "concept of city planning" that prescribed the right of man to a habitation that would assure him of a healthy and calm existence.

In preparing ourselves for an irrational architecture, it would be inconceivable to omit these crucially important facts. It is easy and perhaps entertaining to create new conceptions opposed to preceding ones, but culture works in the opposite manner: it is the continual development and transformation of already-existing phenomena. The Functionalist slogan can always serve us. Utility and function always remain the point of departure for any critique of forms; it is simply a matter of transforming the functional program. It is always valid to seek the most effective significant result by the most economical means. But if we are in agreement on this point, why have we declared our discontent with Functionalism? It is because of its aesthetic, which has never made any effort to see the aesthetic aspect as an autonomous function of human activity. Aesthetics is "the science of the beautiful and the ugly." On a Platonic basis, the Functionalists have ended up denying the autonomous existence of beauty by declaring that "whatever is true and good is always beautiful": i.e. that logic and ethics contain beauty in themselves.

Because of this false notion, they have concocted an aesthetic conception that consists of making the exterior of an object reflect the practical functions of the interior and of the constructive idea. However, these analyses of utility and necessity, which, according to their conceptions, must be the basis of the construction of any man-made object, become immediately absurd if one profoundly analyzes all the objects currently fabricated. A fork or a bed cannot be considered as necessities for human life and health and at the same time conserve a merely relative value.

We are talking here about "acquired necessities." Modern man is suffocating under a mountain of "necessities" such as televisions, refrigerators, etc., while making himself incapable of living his true life. We are obviously not opposed to modern technologies, but we are against any notion of an absolute need for objects; in fact, we question their actual utility.

The Functionalists also ignore the psychological function of ambiences. Just as coffee has no value for human health, but only a psychological and sensorial importance, in the same way the view of the exterior of the constructions and objects that surround us and that we use has a function independent of its practical utility. The exterior of a house should not reflect its interior; it should constitute a source of poetic sensation for the observer.

Critique of the "Organic" Doctrine in Architecture

Instead of relying on a free imagination to renovate present-day architecture, people have enthusiastically plunged in the opposite direction, trying, through scientific analyses of biological life, to discover the animal and plant constructions that might serve as bases for architectural constructions. But there are many reasons why these attempts to turn architecture into a pseudoscience remain of secondary importance.

In the first place, architecture is a human technique, and in fact we can consider any human technique as a sort of architecture; and we should be aware that this technique is distinctly antiscientific in its inspiration, its means and its goals.

All human techniques are inspired by man's needs and desires, they are the direct expression of human interests. For this reason, the objective and disinterested method of science is incapable of creating any architectural techniques.

It should be understood that human techniques are purely subjective. Objectively, a house is only a pile of bricks, just as a machine is nothing but an assemblage of pieces of iron.

Man alone is capable of turning them into something alive; a machine does not move without man's intervention and, for the same reason, it ceases to exist if man no longer bothers with it.

Naturalistic experiments in architecture are based on the idea of an organic style, modeled, for example, on the growth and development of a tree. Such concepts can serve us if we bear in mind the fact that man will never be capable of making new tires grow on his automobiles to replace those that become worn out. The internal work of nature is not only different from human techniques, it develops according to laws that are absolutely opposed to the latter because it obeys a different fundamental law. Nature creates itself from within by evolving from a microscopic germ to a large organism; it grows or "pushes" in opposition to external forces; which means that forms separate from nature cannot exist. Man can create an absolutely perfect sphere or a perfectly straight line; nature cannot. This capacity to create independent objects is considered by architects like Le Corbusier to be a sign of man's superiority over nature. But this is a matter of contrariness, not of superiority. What makes the sphere of an orange imperfect is the stem, which gives the fruit the possibility of developing, and the seeds, which link it to the future. Man is capable of the contrary, he can link and unite two independent objects: a stone with a hole in it and a wooden stick enable him to construct the first hammer. He can also deconstruct this construction at any moment. He can unite a wheel to an axle. This is the secret of human techniques: the ability to unite two apparently independent objects. For those who understand the contradiction between the conceptions of these two types of construction (human and natural), nature is a vast field of apprenticeship. We must not forget that man himself belongs to biological life and thus has more things in common with plants and animals than with crystals, the source of inspiration for certain so-called "objective" architects. Man is one of the species of organic nature, but we should not forget that all of his technologies and arts represent a counterbiological effect formed by his imagination, his intelligence and his creative power within the current of nature. Now, anything that goes against nature is doomed to destruction; which means that man can conserve his creations only if they are adapted to nature. But he does not for all that have the right to imagine that technical evolution can take place on an empirical basis. New techniques are not taught anywhere because they represent a break from everything that exists. Here we see the laws of nature itself. Each evolution takes place through a break in three stages: experimentation — choice — adaptation. The study of nature can serve only to promote the third stage of technical evolution: adaptation.

Some Elementary Laws in the Evolution of Human Techniques

The Functionalist rationalists, because of their ideas on standardization, have imagined that they could arrive at definitive, ideal forms of the various objects that concern humanity.

Present-day evolution has shown that this static conception is erroneous. We need to arrive at a dynamic conception of form, to face the fact that all human forms are in a continual state of transformation. We must not, like the rationalists, evade this transformation; the failure of the rationalists stems from their failure to understand that the only way to avoid the anarchy of change consists of becoming aware of the laws according to which change operates, and making use of those laws. This transformation is called style. Since the rationalists have in consequence denied the raison d'être of style, we are obliged to go back to the old classical conceptions of the evolution of style. This somewhat simplistic conception of stylistic decay is modeled on ancient Hellenic evolution and distinguishes four periods in the sequence of styles. It begins with an uncertain and primitive experimental style; next comes the grand style characterized by a sustained force; then a noble style characterized by a total refinement; this latter declines into a (decadent) style characterized by formal excesses and imbalances. This schema collapses when confronted with reality: historical facts can be fitted into this schema only by violating them. The evolution of forms is much more complex than all that, and constitutes a problem that must be carefully studied. Archeologists have been forced to deepen the study of style because no idea has been transmitted to us from a prehistoric era and nothing speaks to us but the objects themselves; and this study has been able to develop freely because archeology does not conflict with any current vested interest. We can glean certain laws from this study, laws that can be applied to human formations, not only in the evolution of architectural styles but also in spiritual and social and political evolution, because they are applicable everywhere where style is concerned.

1. The evolution of forms proceeds by abrupt breaks

In order for a form to have a collective importance, it must be transformed from a unique phenomenon to a typical phenomenon. The formation of a "type" takes place by a leap. Each functional "type" has a limiting point where the "type" arrives at its greatest active possibility, where all its possibilities are exhausted. This represents the ideal form that is capable of no further improvement. Moreover, such a form cannot be surpassed without its functional value diminishing to the point where one passes to another matter, another "type" serving the same function.

2. The use creates the ideal form

All human creation is imagined. We can dream about new types of function and then implement them by means of experimentation. But we can never imagine the ideal and definitive form of new types, nor arrive at that result by laboratory experiments. The definitive form is found by adaptation and attentive analysis of this "use."

3. The conservatism of forms

When one invents a new "type" to satisfy some function, the form of the latter is influenced by the "type" that it is replacing or by the form of other known and familiar types. Known forms are always given to unknown objects. For example, the first clay bowls were modeled on the woven baskets or gourds or leather pouches that had previously been the suitable forms for serving those functions. In the same way, the first bicycles featured horse's heads, a remnant of the previous form of transportation. It is important to understand that such conservatism of forms is totally illogical: it is not caused by the fact that man does not yet know the definitive and ideal form of the object, but rather by the fact that man is uneasy if he does not find something familiar within unknown phenomena. For example, the first diesel motor boats were made without a smokestack, but passengers did not want to ride them until false smokestacks were added so that they resembled steam boats.

4. The radicalism of forms

If a newly created model achieves great success because of its greater efficacy over the previous form, it gives rise to the creation of a formal radicalism among certain neighboring forms, which strive to take on the appearance of the new form. For example, bronze tools pushed to their extreme utility had a disastrous influence on stone tools by causing them to be deformed toward an elegance that could only be obtained with bronze. Today, aviation has imposed an aerodynamic form even on baby carriages and electric irons. This radicalism of forms is caused by the fact that people become bored if they don't find within the known some element of the uncommon. We may find this radicalism illogical, as do the advocates of standardization, but we should not forget that this human need is the only thing that engenders new discoveries.

Analysis and Synthesis in the Process of Formation

Human techniques are created by a process contrary to that which produces evolution in the biological world. The study of the biological world has led to an important liberation in our concept of structure. The first Functionalists adopted the classic conceptions of Perret (for example), with the logical distinction between supporting elements, covering elements, insulating elements, etc. Naturalistic researches demonstrated that the functions and elements of construction are not identical and that different functions could be fulfilled by an interplay among several elements of construction. Who can say if it is the fibers or the sap that makes possible the vitality and verticality of a plant (or if the skeleton, the muscles or the blood serves the same purpose for man), since each of these elements collaborates in producing the overall result (verticality in this case)?

This is the fundamental problem of the new architecture. All modern architects recognize that we are currently witnessing "a total upheaval of the classic conceptions relating to support and load." Certain architects see this upheaval as a dematerialization of architecture, but it's actually quite the contrary.

We are witnessing the consequences of a new and more profound comprehension of the real nature of matter, obtained by scientific and philosophical researches, both nuclear and general. Our conception of the world has shifted into a four-dimensional perspective, and the consequences are beginning to appear in the future; in the future of art and of technologies, which represent, as we have already seen, the subjective and the interested aspect of human activity. All human technologies are created as elements of human "function." This is why humanist philosophy now contains the key to future construction. It is no longer possible to ignore this inevitable confrontation between technology and philosophy. Architects try to avoid this confrontation by speaking of "three different bodily sensations: the structural and angular sensation, the sensation of plastic rotundity, and the sensation of muscular tension." We can see that these three different sensations correspond to three different forms of architectural construction, which have up till now been insolubly contradictory. The architects acknowledge that a synthesis now appears to be possible; but why not admit right from the start that these three sensations correspond precisely to the sensations of logic, ethics and aesthetics, those basic concepts of classical philosophy; i.e. that in the domain of human techniques they correspond to the three basic functions: STRUCTURE — FORM — SURFACE. We are approaching a synthesis of these three functional elements, but we would be gravely mistaken if we thought that this synthesis will be obtained by blurring the three elements together. On the contrary, we can create a synthesis by opposing each of the three functional elements to the others in a system of complementary contradiction. Knowledge of the inferior complementary value of every existing phenomenon is a new reality, even if it is applied to the old dialectical tradition, and we are now presenting a few possibilities that are offered by a systematization of architectural philosophy on the basis of this idea of the linking of contraries (oppositions/complementarities). Let us not forget that our conception of life, our human philosophy, is far from classical science; it is effectively limited to a single dimension of judgment: high and low (Heaven/Hell, Good/Evil). The break from this one-dimensional perspective of the Middle Ages is for this reason much more difficult than the transformations of current scientific philosophy involving a transition from three to four dimensions based on the relativity of different centers. The former break entailed violent and traditional objections, whereas we are now seeing the necessity of a new morality relative to centers of interest. It is therefore necessary to break with the old conception of a difference between what were referred to as superior and inferior interests. This corresponds to a transformation of the idea of a superiority and an inferiority of different occupations and social activities of man. If we base our philosophy in the heart of each activity, we can distinguish three different aspects. First of all, the passive and static or neutral aspect (logical aspects); then the centralized aspect of circulating activities (the ethical aspect of balanced movement); and finally, the peripheral, noncentralized, radiating aspect (the aesthetic aspect). This new conception gives a new variant to the old ideas of surface, form and structure, because any particular thing can be considered as surface or structure or form. It is simply necessary to specify the character of these three aspects.

The Three Definitions of Art

Since the Renaissance, the natural sciences have developed with lightning speed while the human sciences [ sciences humaines: roughly equivalent to "social sciences" in English] have remained attached to Medieval concepts. There is no truly modern human science; it doesn't exist. It is only with the latest vision of the world that human science can find its true basis. Updating the human sciences has henceforth become a necessity for the future evolution of the natural sciences. The importance of this evolution for art is considerable, because the human sciences are the sciences of the arts. "Man is his art." Recognition of the complementary interlinking of phenomena also reveals the element of contradiction that is necessary for understanding artistic activity. It is only by a "spiral" movement from one point of observation to another that one arrives at the truth, which is a synthesis of several irreducible truths. As we have already shown, we will group our observations in a three-stage system:

We are dealing here not with evolutionary stages toward a higher summit, but with stages of a "perpetual motion" of the evolution of forms. By beginning from these three points of observation, art and human activity acquire characteristics and values that are different from what was given in their time by the three fundamental definitions of art, definitions that are in continual contradiction and that struggle with each other. Each of these points is as true as the others, but no single one of them can serve as a "sole" valid definition of art. This complete definition operates thanks to the dialectical synthesis among the three definitions.

1. The aesthetic definition of art:

art is the realization of the unknown;
art is realizing the unrealizable;
art is the ideal point of man and his total potentiality;
or to put it another way, art is what cannot be done, because, as the humorist Storm P. put it, "if it could be done, it would not be art."

2. The ethical definition of art:

art is subjective reality;
art is the capacity of a being or a community;
art is the expression of a vital manifestation;
or as Ruskin put it, "art is the expression of man's pleasure in accomplishing his work."

3. The logical or scientific definition of art:

art is the true image of an object;
art is disinterested observation;
or as Zola's famous definition put it, "art is nature viewed through a temperament."

These are the three conceptions of art — Idealist, Realist and Naturalist. All three of them are false, but as a set they are indispensable for finding artistic truth, even when such art is manifested as architecture, technology, or applied art.

All the works of man must pass through these three analyses:

1) The aesthetic analysis of the immediate sensory and spontaneous effect of the object, of its shock value, dramatic value, surprise value or novelty value. This it the useless value, a value that is superfluous and independent of any purpose (i.e. an imagined value).

2) The ethical analysis of its utility relative to human interests, its social and personal function.

3) The scientific analysis of its innate and objective structure independent of any human interests, i.e. the analysis of the possibilities of its construction, as opposed to its goals.

This is the ideological point of departure for the creation of a new world.

Arguments Concerning the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (as Opposed to an Imaginary Bauhaus) and Its Present Purpose

"The Bauhaus has become a fixed conception for all those who take part in the creation of architectural forms, applied arts, and other useful forms. Its influence spans countries and continents. Its spiritual atmosphere, rich with tension and élan, continues to act. Its influence will never be extinguished, and the guarantee of this permanence is the innate spirituality, enthusiasm, magic and seriousness of its creators. There will always be youth who will follow, in their own new manner, the path blazed by the Bauhaus."

—Peter Rohl, in Baukunst und Werkform
(Supplement to the journal Frankfurter Hefte #1-2, 1954)

"I was standing before my twenty-four students. One of them, who came from a college in southern Germany, said to me: 'This debate about the past, about the Bauhaus, and all these explanations are somewhat interesting, but we young people can only view them as disinterested spectators. In the final analysis, all that has no relevance for us. What interest can ossified architectural theories from 1930 have for us?' I must confess that this manner of speaking caused me great uneasiness."

—Peter Gundwin, Ibid.

"Bauhaus is the name of an artistic inspiration."

—Asger Jorn (letter to the architect Max Bill, Director of the New Bauhaus at Ulm, January 16, 1954)

"Bauhaus is not the name of an artistic inspiration; it signifies a movement that represents a well-defined doctrine."

—Max Bill (letter to Asger Jorn, January 23, 1954)

"If Bauhaus is not the name of an artistic inspiration, it is the name of a doctrine without inspiration, i.e. a dead doctrine."

—Asger Jorn (letter to Max Bill, February 12, 1954)

All new cultural evolutions, even the most practical and utilitarian ones, must begin with mental visions and artistic inspirations. It is a historical fact that the Functionalist language of forms had its origin in Cubist painting. This sequence is quite natural. It is obviously easier to draw than to build, and one has to imagine before being able to create. Architecture is always the end result of a mental and artistic evolution; it is the materialization of an economic stage. Architecture is the culmination of every artistic venture because creating an architecture means creating an ambience and determining a mode of life. The conditions of life have changed profoundly since the last war. This is manifested above all in the free arts. We are now entering a mental and artistic revolution that is violently rising up against the dead language of Cubism and Constructivism. Certain architects thus find themselves obliged to defend a weakened position, a position that is increasingly approaching a state of total anemia. In his letter to Asger Jorn of January 14, 1954, Max Bill states: "We do not understand by art any sort of 'self-expression,' but a true art. We are not in agreement with the Cobra group nor with any similar groups." This viewpoint logically corresponds to the one Bill expressed in a previous text (December 1, 1953): "For us at Ulm, the art in question must be considered in a manner different than it was in the old Bauhaus, where self-expression was considered an integral aspect of form."

Gropius wrote to the contrary: "The creative artist chooses, in accordance with his own feelings, among a plurality of possible solutions on the same economic plane. For this reason, art reflects the spirit of its creator." This point of view explains the interest and sympathy in the relations between the old Bauhaus and Expressionist artists like Kokoschka and Marc Chagall. Today the situation has entirely changed. The new Bauhaus, which has sunk into a doctrinaire and conservative formalism, is manifesting its hostility toward any attempt at self-expression, and its goal is limited to putting already existing elements into order. This is a serious mistake because today we need a new, living Bauhaus, rich with tension and élan, a Bauhaus that can fertilize and fortify the experiences of all the free arts. It is a mistake above all because new and important ideas concerning personal expression are appearing at this time, ideas that are revealing countless creative possibilities.

What is the importance of personal expression in form? Gropius makes this importance clear, but does not define it. Is his statement merely perfunctory? Isn't personal expression absolutely useless in form? He writes: "It is erroneous to consider it necessary to emphasize individualism at all cost," and "in the art of modern construction one clearly recognizes a tendency toward objectivizing personal and national interests. Architecture is always national, and always individual also. But of these three concentric circles — individual, people, humanity — the latter is the greatest and encompasses both of the others."

"Gropius did not know how to think," observed the architect Rudolf Schwarz in a perfidious critique of the old Bauhaus, and the previous quotation seems to confirm that statement. The most dangerous point in all this is that Gropius's confusion is shared by all modern architects. The three designated concentric circles have nothing to do with an objectivization; on the contrary, objectivizing means excluding, isolating, abstracting, i.e. the contrary of encompassing. Moreover, the three circles do not represent circles of objectivity, but circles of interests, circles of subjectivity that are mutually inseparable. Humanity exists thanks to individuals, and the interest of the individual surpasses his own existence. The interests common to humanity represent a collective subjectivity. We are now witnessing a new conception of present-day subjectivity. It is revolutionizing the theoretical and ideological basis of future arts and technologies. We have linked phenomena together and they have entered into a living synthesis; we have created a dynamic conception of art and technology, and the ultimate aim of all arts and all technologies is to create common human values, to serve human interests. But up till now no art or technology has begun in this way because it is impossible: every enterprise begins as a useless game in a circle closed off from any interests, even the interests of personal satisfaction. But individual satisfaction and its personal expression are not without interest for other individuals, insofar as they represent new possibilities or experiences. This is the case even when the interest is manifested only in the form of passive admiration. Personal expression involves the synthesis of two phenomena: a human interest and a new or original solution; which amounts to saying that subjectivity and individualism are two distinct and independent elements. A "self-expression" can be absolutely conventional and insignificant if it is the expression of a limited being; and a new and original thing may be of no interest if it does not satisfy any human desire. This is why the conception of art prevalent among theorists of modern art like Herbert Read is false and reactionary. For them, art is composed of two elements: self-expression and order. The Constructivists, by abolishing personality, reduce art to a pure question of order. We, on the contrary, are adding to those two elements an "autonomous third one": experimentation, i.e. renovation. What is the importance of experimentation in art? It is at the same time essential and elusive; experimentation in art and technique is like the leaven for bread; without adding anything at all to the work itself, it nevertheless inspires it and augments it to a dramatic degree. We have discovered with modern science that evolution does not operate on the basis of a doctrine but on the basis of several contradictory doctrines, with a complementary action. The activity of Functionalism between the two World Wars was intimately linked to the complementary artistic tendencies of that era (Dada and Expressionism). We are neither Dadaists nor Expressionists. Since that time, Surrealism has made its presence felt and it would be stupid to ignore it.

ASGER JORN
1954

This text was originally written in Italian and published in Milan ( Imagine et forma, 1954), then translated into French and included in Pour la Forme: ébauche d'une méthodologie des arts, a large collection of Jorn's writings published by the Situationist International (Paris, June 1958; reprinted by Éditions Allia, 2001). Translated from the French by Ken Knabb. This translation has been included in a large anthology edited by Ruth Baumeister: Fraternité Avant Tout: Asger Jorn's Writings on Art and Architecture, 1938-1958 (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2011).

[ Other Texts by Asger Jorn]

[ Other Situationist Texts]

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The modern revolution in the domains of painting and sculpture has led various artists and architects to believe that sculpture and painting are no longer appropriate artistic forms for our time. That is, that these arts are no longer viable forms of expression.

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Free downloads link for all 14 titles.

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The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 in the city of Weimar by German architect Walter Gropius. Its core objective was a radical concept: to reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of all the arts. Gropius explained this vision for a union of crafts, art and technology in the Programm des Staatlichen Bauhauses Weimar (1919), which described a utopian craft guild combining architecture, sculpture, and painting into a single creative expression [Gesamtkunstwerk]. Gropius developed a curriculum that would turn out artisans and designers capable of creating useful and beautiful objects appropriate to this new system of living.

The Bauhaus combined elements of both fine arts and design education. The curriculum commenced with a preliminary course that immersed the students, who came from a diverse range of social and educational backgrounds, in the study of materials, colour theory, and formal relationships in preparation for more specialized studies. This preliminary course was often taught by visual artists, including Johannes Itten, László Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky, among others.

The workshops included metalworking, weaving, ceramics, carpentry, graphic printing, printing and advertising, photography, glass and wall painting, stone and wood sculpture, and theatre. Among the teachers were also Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Hinnerk Scheper, Joost Schmidt, Gunta Stölzl, and Walter Peterhans. (More about the workshops, classes, and teachers and students.)

In 1925, the Bauhaus moved from Weimar to Dessau. Gropius stepped down as director of the Bauhaus in April 1928, succeeded by the architect Hannes Meyer. Under pressure from an increasingly right-wing municipal government, Meyer resigned as director of the Bauhaus in 1930. He was replaced by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The political situation in Germany, combined with the perilous financial condition of the Bauhaus, caused Mies to relocate the school to Berlin in September 1932, where it operated on a reduced scale. The Bauhaus eventually dissolved itself under pressure from the Nazis in 1933.

During the years of World War II, many of the key figures of the Bauhaus emigrated to the United States, where their work and their teaching philosophies influenced generations of young architects and designers. Marcel Breuer and Josef Albers taught at Yale, Walter Gropius went to Harvard, and Moholy-Nagy established the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937. [2] [3]

Protagonists

6. Theo van Doesburg, Grundbegriffe der neuen gestaltenden Kunst, Munich: Albert Langen, 1925, 40+[26] pp.

Principles of Neo-Plastic Art, intro. Hans M. Wingler, afterw. H.L.C. Jaffé, trans. Janet Seligman, London: Lund Humphries, 1968, x+73 pp; Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1968, x+73 pp, PDF. (English)

more translations

8. L. Moholy-Nagy, Malerei, Fotografie, Film, Munich: Albert Langen, 1925, 115 pp; 2nd ed., exp., 1927, 140 pp, PDF, JPG. Incl. "Dynamik der Gross-Stadt", pp 116-129.

11. Kasimir Malewitsch, Die gegenstandslose Welt, Munich: Albert Langen, 1927, 104 pp, PDF, JPG; new ed., exp., Mainz: Florian Kupferberg, 1980. Trans. of the Russian version original written in 1923.

13. Albert Gleizes, Kubismus, Munich: Albert Langen, 1928, 101 pp; repr. in Gleizes, Puissances du cubisme, 1969; repr., Mainz and Berlin: Florian Kupferberg, 1980. Written 1925-28.

14. László Moholy-Nagy, Von Material zu Architektur, Munich: Albert Langen, 1929, 241 pp; facsimile repr., Mainz and Berlin: Florian Kupferberg, 1968, 251 pp.

The above PDFs were assembled from scans on IADDB.org, with the exception of 4(2) which is sourced from Baunet Reader.

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library hosts partial scan of 1(1), and Baunet Reader offers different scans of 2(1) and 3(1-3) as PDFs.

bauhaus, zeitschrift für gestaltung, eds. Walter Gropius and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1:1-2:1), Ernst Kállai (2:2/3-3:4), Ludwig Hilberseimer (4:1), Josef Albers (4:2), W. Kandinsky (4:3), 14 issues, Dessau, 1926-31; repr., Nendeln: Klaus Reprint, 1977.

(in German unless noted otherwise)

Walter Gropius, Programm des Staatlichen Bauhauses Weimar, Weimar, April 1919, 4 pp.

Satzungen des Staatlichen Bauhauses zu Weimar, Weimar, 1921.

Bruno Adler (ed.), Utopia. Dokumente der Wirklichkeit, 2 vols., Weimar, 1921, 85 pp. [4]

Die Bauhausbühne. Leitung: Lothar Schreyer. Erste Mitteilung, Weimar, 1922.

Walter Gropius, Idee und Aufbau des staatlichen Bauhauses Weimar, Munich: Bauhausverlag, 1923, 12 pp.

Neue Europäische Graphik 1921-1923, Potsdam: Müller 8, 1923.

Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, 1919-1923, Weimar and Munich: Bauhausverlag, 1923, 225 pp, PDF.

Pressestimmen für das Staatliche Bauhaus Weimar, Weimar, 1924; repr., Nendeln: Klaus Reprint, 1980.

Walter Gropius, Die bisherige und zukünftige Arbeit des Staatlichen Bauhauses Weimar, Weimar, 1924.

A. Bodenthal, bauhaus dessau - hochschule für gestaltung, Dessau, 1928.

Bauhaus Dessau: J. Albers, L. Feininger, W. Kandinsky, P. Klee, O. Schlemmer, Basel: Kunsthalle Basel, 1929. Exh. catalogue. Review: Kállai (Werk). Commentary: Bauhaus100.de.

Collections, archives

Walter Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus, trans. P. Morton Shand, London: Faber and Faber, 1935; MIT Press, 1965. (English) Translated from the manuscript in German entitled Die neue Architektur und das Bauhaus. Grundzüge und Entwicklung einer Konzeption.

Walter Gropius, Scope of Total Architecture, New York: Harper & Row, 1955, 185 pp. Selected texts. (English)

Alcances de la arquitectura integral, trans. Luis Fabricant, Buenos Aires: La Isla, 1956, 197 pp. (Spanish)

Seikatsu kukan no sozo [生活空間の創造], Tokyo: Shōkokusha, 1958, 179 pp. (Japanese)

Architekur: Wege zu einer optischen Kultur, afterw. Hans M. Wingler, Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1982, 191+[12] pp. (German)

Hans M. Wingler, Das Bauhaus 1919-1933. Weimar, Dessau, Berlin und die Nachfolge in Chicago seit 1937, Cologne: DuMont, and Bramsche: Rasch, 1962; exp.ed., 1968; 3rd ed., 1975. (German)

The Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago, MIT Press, 1969; 1975; 1978. (English)

trans. into Japanese (Tokyo, 1969); Italian (Milan, 1971); Spanish (Barcelona, 1975).

50 Jahre Bauhaus, ed. Wulf Herzogenrath, Stuttgart: Württembergischen Kunstverein, 1968, 368 pp. Catalogue. (German)

50 jaar Bauhaus, Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1968, 363 pp. (Dutch)

Bauhaus 1919-1969, Paris: Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, 1969, 361 pp. (French)

50 Jahre Bauhaus, 1971, 405 pp. (Japanese)

Bauhaus, Stuttgart: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, 1974, 251 pp. Trans. of abbreviated edition. (Brazilian Portuguese)

, trans. Antonio de Zubiaurre, Stuttgart: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, 1976, 251 pp. Trans. of abbreviated edition. [6] (Spanish)

Bauhaus, Stuttgart: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, 1981, 251 pp. Trans. of abbreviated edition. (Italian)

Eckhard Neumann (ed.), Bauhaus und Bauhäusler: Bekenntnisse und Erinnerungen, Bern: Hallwag, 1971, 216 pp; repr., 1985. (German)
Bauhaus and Bauhaus People: Personal Opinions and Recollections of Former Bauhaus Members and Their Contemporaries, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970, 256 pp; rev. ed., trans. Eva Richter and Alba Lorman, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993, 302 pp. (English)

Bauhaus Fotografie, eds. Egidio Marzona and Roswitha Fricke, Düsseldorf: Marzona, 1982. Contains 500 photographs and selected texts. (German)

Rainer Wick, Bauhaus-Pädagogik, Cologne: DuMont, 1982, 335 pp. (German)
Pedagogia da Bauhaus, trans. João Azenha Jr, Sao Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1989, 464 pp. (Brazilian Portuguese)

Frank Whitford, Bauhaus, London: Thames and Hudson, 1984, 216 pp. (English)

Le Bauhaus, trans. Catherine Ter-Sarkissian, Paris: Thames and Hudson, 1989, 216 pp. (French)

La Bauhaus, trans. José Luis Fernández-Villanueva, Barcelona: Destino, 1991, 216 pp. (Spanish)

Das Bauhaus: Selbstzeugnisse von Meistern und Studenten, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1993, 328 pp. (German)

Baohaosi [包豪斯], Beijing: San lian shu dian, 2001. (Chinese)

Mpaouchaous, trans. Andreas Pappas, Athens: Ypodomē, 1993, 216 pp. (Greek)

Baohaosi [包浩斯], trans. Lin Yuru, Taipei: Shang zhou chu ban, 2010, 251 pp. (Chinese)

Baʼohaus, trans. Tami Eylon-Ortal, Tel Aviv: Resling, 2012, 228 pp. (Hebrew)

Ulrike Müller, Bauhausfrauen. Meisterinnen in Kunst, Handwerk und Design, Munich: Sandmann, 2009, 160 pp; new ed., rev., Sandmann, 2019, 160 pp. [9] (German)

Markéta Svobodová, Bauhaus a Československo 1919-1938: studenti, koncepty, kontakty / The Bauhaus and Czechoslovakia 1919-1938: Students, Concepts, Contacts, Prague: Kant, 2016, 255 pp. [11] (Czech)/(English)

Bauhaus and America: Experiments with Light and Movement / Bauhaus und Amerika. Experimente in Licht und Bewegung, Bielefeld: Kerber, 2018. Catalogue. [12] (English)/(German)

Elizabeth Otto, Patrick Rössler, Bauhaus Women: A Global Perspective, London: Palazzo, 2019, 192 pp. [13] (English)

Patrick Rössler, Bauhausmädels: A Tribute to Pioneering Women Artists, Taschen, 2019, 480 pp. Publisher. (English)/(French)/(German)

Sound recordings

Bauhaus Reviewed 1919-1933, LTM Recordings, 2007, 72 min. English-language interviews with Gropius, Albers and van der Rohe, accompanied by piano pieces written between 1919-1925 by composers associated with the Bauhaus: Schoenberg, Hauer, Antheil, Wolpe and Stuckenschmidt. [14] [15] [16]

Bibliography

1. Bauhaus-Kolloquium Weimar vom 27. - 29.10. 1976, "50 Jahre Bauhaus Dessau". [17]

2. Bauhaus-Kolloquium Weimar vom 27. - 29.06. 1979, "60 Jahre Gründung Bauhaus". [18]

3. Bauhaus-Kolloquium Weimar vom 5. bis 7. Juli 1983, "Das Bauhauserbe und die gegenwärtige Entwicklung der Architektur : zum 100. Geburtstag von Walter Gropius [19]

4. Bauhaus-Kolloquium Weimar vom 24. - 26. Juni 1986, "Der wissenschaftlich-technische Fortschritt und die sozial-kulturellen Funktionen von Architektur und industrieller Formgestaltung in unserer Epoche". [20]

later editions: [21]

Bauhaus Online, a comprehensive website by Foundation of Weimar Classics, Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, and Bauhaus Archive Berlin.

Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, est. 1994.

Bauhaus100: 100 Jahre Bauhaus. A collaboration between Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung in Berlin, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, and Klassik Stiftung Weimar, 2019.

Bauhausfrauen, biographies of Bauhaus women on FemBio.

Making Futures Bauhaus+, an action research project that addresses questions of architecture as a collective form and architecture as a resource. Initiated in 2018 by raumlabor and the Berlin University of the Arts.

Baunet: Bauhaus Networking Ideas and Practice, an international research and exhibition project, coordinated by the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, started 2013.

Modell Bauhaus, an exhibition at Bauhaus-Archiv/Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 2009.

Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity, an exhibition at MoMA, 2009-2010.

The Bauhaus and Harvard, an exhibition at Harvard Art Museums, curated by Laura Muir, Feb-Jul 2019.

Bauhaus Chronology compiled by Harvard Art Museums.

Works on Avantgarde-Museum.com

Bauhaus on Wikipedia

Art and design schools

Bauhaus (Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, 1919-33), Vitebsk Popular Art Institute (Vitebsk, 1919-22), VkHUTEMAS (Moscow, 1920-26), School of Arts and Crafts (Bratislava, 1928-39), Black Mountain College (Black Mountain/NC, 1933-57), Ulm School of Design (Ulm, 1953-68), Academy of Media Arts (Cologne, est. 1990), Piet Zwart Institute (Rotterdam, est. 2001)

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Tate booklet PDF free download

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Session of group criticism, Scarborough Summer School, Yorkshire, c.1956
© Estate of Tom Hudson

This display explored the role that Basic Design - a new and radical approach to training in art schools - played in revolutionising art education across Britain in the 1950s and 1960s.

Through the work of some of its key teachers including Roy Ascott, Richard Hamilton, Tom Hudson, Victor Pasmore and Harry Thubron, and their students, the display surveyed the main features of Basic Design as they emerged and were taught in Britain, with accompanying archival material and video documentation.

A booklet also accompanied the display with texts on the history and development of Basic Design teaching in art school education.
Download the booklet as a PDF
This display was devised by Elena Crippa and Beth Williamson with Jenny Powell. It forms part of Tate's Leverhulme Trust-funded research project Art School Educated.

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This display explored the role that Basic Design - a new and radical approach to training in art schools - played in revolutionising art education across Britain in the 1950s and 1960s.

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BBC Documentary - Bauhaus 100 - 100 Years of Bauhaus

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In 1919 an art school opened in Germany that would change the world forever. It was called the Bauhaus. A century later, its radical thinking still shapes our lives today. Bauhaus 100 is the story of Walter Gropius, architect and founder of the Bauhaus, and the teachers and students he gathered to form this influential school.

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Student protest 2020. History repeating

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Tweets by artschoolsared1

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Hornsey College of Art - Student Protest 1968

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Hornsey College of Art - Student Protest 1968

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Inevitable sequel to the protests in Europe - student unrest in Britain. Among the Universities and Colleges to express dissatisfaction with authority - Hornsey College of Art, where students have taken over the administration. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/2c1726010ca74c028d47e2292ce54390 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork

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Shift/Work: Roy Ascott | Groundcourse Part 2

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Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop 10th April 2016 The Groundcourse is a two year foundation led by Roy Ascott at Ealing (1961-64), Ipswich School of Art (1964-67) and currently at Beijing DeTao Masters Academy in Shanghai. ​ Groundcourse is a seminal educational experiment that is a key influence on Shift/Work.

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A film about Herbert Read, art and anarchism.

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To Hell with Culture (2014) - a film about Herbert Read, art and anarchism

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Director: Huw Wahl Description: Co-founder of the ICA, Herbert Read (1893-1968) was an influential art critic, poet and committed anarchist. In his 1943 essay, To Hell with Culture, Read laid out his ideas for a civilisation based on cooperation in which culture would no longer be a commodity, separated from society, but an integral part of everyday life.

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Kurt Rowland: Visual Education and Beyond

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Kurt Rowland: Visual Education and Beyond

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A presentation at the Bluecoat, Liverpool, 2017

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Kurt Rowland: Visual Education and Beyond

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Speaker: Andrew Demetrius (University of St Andrews) Talk given as part of the public events programme for the exhibition Abacus, at the Bluecoat, Liverpool, 23 September 2017.

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Episode 1 of John Berger's 1972 BBC television series.

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Uploaded by CjamPhotography on 2013-04-16.

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Further reading

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Since 1960, progressive forces within art education have fired new impulses in the field of artistic production. As society at large embraced youth and popular culture, art school students with international aspirations exploded class barriers, fused fashion with Pop and insisted that art was integral to social change. Art schools across Britain, and notably in London, responded to these seismic changes, beginning to widen the range of artistic exploration from a craft-based curriculum to more art-historical and experimental approaches. A new generation emerged, whose techniques, perspectives and arguments were more influenced by ideas of art theory and personal exploration than draftsmanship and life-drawing, and whose forms of expression maintain their influence on artists today.

Now, for the first time, this history of innovation is uncovered by scholars in the field who, across nine thematic chapters, address key aspects of a dynamic period, from the work of early pioneers in international styles, through to changes in studio practice, and new roles in the art school for art history, architecture and the art market. This essential survey will appeal to students, scholars and practising artists, as well as everyone fascinated in the workings of the contemporary art world.

Nigel Llewellyn is a freelance art historian and curator. He was Director of the Research Centres programme at the Humanities Research Council before leaving in 2007 to establish the Research Department at Tate.

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The London Art Schools|Books|Tate Shop | Tate

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Since 1960, progressive forces within art education have fired new impulses in the field of artistic production. As society at large embraced youth and popular culture, art school students with international aspirations exploded class barriers, fused fashion with Pop and insisted that art was integral to social change.

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L&S_04_The Shape of Towns_Notes for Teachers-1

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Black Mountain College 1933-1957

Helen Molesworth; With Ruth Erickson

View Inside Price: $75.00

400 pages, 9 1/2 x 12 1/2
318 color + 170 b/w illus.
ISBN: 9780300211917
Hardcover

Published in association with the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

A dynamic new look at the legendary college that was a major incubator of the arts in midcentury America
In 1933, John Rice founded Black Mountain College in North Carolina as an experiment in making artistic experience central to learning. Though it operated for only 24 years, this pioneering school played a significant role in fostering avant-garde art, music, dance, and poetry, and an astonishing number of important artists taught or studied there. Among the instructors were Josef and Anni Albers, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, Karen Karnes, M. C. Richards, and Willem de Kooning, and students included Ruth Asawa, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cy Twombly.

Leap Before You Look is a singular exploration of this legendary school and of the work of the artists who spent time there. Scholars from a variety of fields contribute original essays about diverse aspects of the College-spanning everything from its farm program to the influence of Bauhaus principles-and about the people and ideas that gave it such a lasting impact. In addition, catalogue entries highlight selected works, including writings, musical compositions, visual arts, and crafts. The book's fresh approach and rich illustration program convey the atmosphere of creativity and experimentation that was unique to Black Mountain College, and that served as an inspiration to so many. This timely volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in the College and its enduring legacy.

Helen Molesworth is chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Ruth Erickson is assistant curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.

EXHIBITION SCHEDULE
The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
(10/10/15-01/24/16)

Hammer Museum, UCLA
(02/21/16-05/14/16)

Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University
(09/17/16-01/01/17)

"I cannot praise the show's beautiful and accessible catalog highly enough. It will have a long life, and will ensure that Leap Before You Look will be looked back on for years to come as the landmark event that it is."-Sebastian Smee, Boston Globe

"The richly illustrated catalog . . . offers a visual record of the early efforts of such eminences as choreographer Merce Cunningham, composer John Cage, and the painters Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenbeg."- Wall Street Journal, 2015 'Best Books for Art Lovers'

"Strikingly desiged and weighty . . . [the authors] have delved deeply into the history of the unconventional North Carolina art school."- I ntrospective: The 1stdibs Magazine, 2015 Holiday Book Roundup

" Leap Before you Look Black Mountain College is an immense, and important catalogue" -Anna Maria Polidori, Alfemminile.blogspot

Finalist for the 2015 George Wittenborn Book Award, given by the Art Libraries Society of North America

Won an honorable mention for the 2016 Dedalus Foundation Exhibition Catalogue Award

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Black Mountain College 1933-1957 Helen Molesworth; With Ruth Erickson View Inside Price: $75.00 400 pages, 9 1/2 x 12 1/2 318 color + 170 b/w illus.