Bauhaus Centennial

The Bauhaus logo

"The ultimate goal of all art is the building!" is the first sentence of the Bauhaus manifesto. 

The German school Bauhaus (literally translated as "building house" () was founded in Weimar by Walter Gropius in April 1919 and was operational until 1933. The main philosophy was about design as an interdisciplinary practice involving architecture, painting, sculpture, performing arts, graphic, industrial and interior design and typography. The notion of Gesamtwerk ("total work") and Gesamtkunstwerk("'total' work of art") was informing any methodology and product.

The manifesto continues with enthusiastic appreciation of craftsmanship 

So let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen, free of the divisive class pretensions that endeavoured to raise a prideful barrier between craftsmen and artists! Let us strive for, conceive and create the new building of the future that will unite every discipline, architecture and sculpture and painting, and which will one day rise heavenwards from the million hands of craftsmen as a clear symbol of a new belief to come. 

Architects, sculptors, painters—we all must return to craftsmanship! For there is no such thing as “art by profession”. There is no essential difference between the artist and the artisan. The artist is an exalted artisan. Merciful heaven, in rare moments of illumination beyond man’s will, may allow art to blossom from the work of his hand, but the foundations of proficiency are indispensable to every artist. This is the original source of creative design. 

 The Bauhaus has provided great inspiration for my interdisciplinary practice Space Ink integrating art, architecture and design at different scales, merging physical products with computing methodologies. My work with performance art also finds references in Oskar Schlemmer, another great Bauhaus master.

Google Doodle also celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus movement.

Eva Mueller's Bauhaus Tattoo 

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exhibitions | The Self in the Practice and Space of Everyday Life (and Art)

What we need is not the Gesamtkunstwerk, alongside and separated from which life flows by, but a synthesis of all the vital impulses spontaneously forming itself into the all-embracing Gesamtwerk (life) which abolishes all isolation, in which all individual accomplishments proceed from a biological necessity and culminate in a universal necessity.  

László Moholy-Nagy

Three seemingly disconnected and unrelated art exhibitions are currently on view in New York: “On Kawara: Silence” at the Guggenheim Museum,  “In the Studio: Photographs” at Gagosian and “Self: Portrait of Artists in Their Absence" at the National Academy Museum. The exhibitions share instead a strong commonality about making art intersecting with living life: the studio is an experiential place and the artist is a maker of artwork impregnated with existential questioning and awareness of self image. Uncannily these three exhibitions are located a few blocks apart from each other in the Manhattan Upper East Side and seem to complement each other in terms of media: photography, video, sculpture, found objects, newspaper clips, installation. 
    The most compelling exhibition is probably the On Kawara retrospective: a recording of the conceptual artist's existence as art practice, explored in many different media, from paintings to mail art, artist books. The exhibition starts with work from 1964, produced in different places across the planet during the artist numerous travels and includes several series:

• date paintings from Today; 
• postcards from I Got Up; 
• telegrams from I Am Still Alive; 
• maps from I Went series; 
• lists of names from I Met;
• newspaper clips from I Read;
• inventory of paintings from Journals; 
• calendars from One Hundred Years and One Million Years.

Walking in the continuous six-floor ramp of the Guggenheim Museum feels like joining On Kawara on his  meditation on living in the awareness of space and time as recording of his existence. Life is recorded with the accuracy of a database. I feel particularly intrigued by this art practice which I experienced in a participatory mode in 2009, as one of the readers for reading for One Million Years 

The three exhibitions made me think of Michel de Certau "The Practice of Everyday Life": a welcomed diversion from many contemporary art exhibitions where often gimmicks camouflage the lack of contents.

Art Events | Sun Xun "Time Vivarium" and Gesamtkunstwerk?

What we need is not the Gesamtkunstwerk, alongside and separated from which life flows by, but a synthesis of all the vital impulses spontaneously forming itself into the all-embracing Gesamtwerk (life) which abolishes all isolation, in which all individual accomplishments proceed from a biological necessity and culminate in a universal necessity.  

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy 

The Bauhaus notion of Gesamtwerk is become pervasive in the current art production which is often, in some instances, interwoven with everyday life -my own practice is an example.

A glorified commercial -yet beautiful- example is Sun Xun's oeuvre, currently on view at Sean Kelly spanning film, installations, artist books, prints. 

Even literal trash byproduct of art production becomes a commercially viable merchandise :-)