The Bauhaus

The Bauhaus was the gateway into Contemporary art.  This school of art and design was the school of innovation with professors that were borderline schizophrenic geniuses.  It was built in Weimar, Germany in 1919 and crafted to join, art with industrial design.  This school pushed the idea of art as a function and created a new era of design all together.  In 1923 the founder and first director Walter Gropius opened an exhibition that showed the world the full spectrum of the Bauhaus.  The Haus Am Horn fused art with function in a futuristic way, into a residential building.  The school continued producing outstanding architecture and influential design even after moving to Dessau, due to loss of funds.  The school became it's own factory, when Hannes Meyer became director.  In his efforts to create a harmonious society, he managed to create artwork that was made for the masses, but blurring the lines between craftsmen and artists.  He wanted there to be no separation between the two.  Through the pressure of the government, the Bauhaus changed hands and directions again.  Ludwig Mies van der Rohe led the school into a technical school of architecture with workshop departments.  The students were taught by the most creative minds of the times, and through hands on experience.  The funding for the Bauhaus was cut off and the Nazis closed the school down in 1933.  But the teachings and the idea of the Bauhaus is still seen throughout the world and continue on.

The idea of the Bauhaus was to create through an industrial method without being destructive.  The invention of fonts, architecture,  and the explosion of graphic design all took place at the Bauhaus.  The professors were either artists or craftsmen, and the students were introduced to every aspect of both.  The Bauhaus brought it's theories to the Chicago and created a world of luminous architecture.  The idea of glass and steel shining from tall buildings (known as skyscrapers) brought the basics of the Bauhaus into the everyday world.  The Bauhaus was the innovator of functional art in the industrial world, and now it is status quo.