12409barbicanbauhausonlinelearningresourcefinal3

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learning resource

bauhausart as life


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contents

at a glance 3the exhibition map 3key words 5key people 7

introduction to the exhibition 9introduction to the learning resource 10a creative revolution 12 why the bauhaus still matters 13

imagining utopia 151. Activity: Make Your Manifesto2. Activity: Reflecting on Utopia3. Activity: Reorganising Reality

the school that changed everything 174. Activity: Shadow Maps5. Activity: The Invisible Tool6. Activity: Picturing the Utopia an Object

was Designed For7. Activity: Make a Celebration8. Activity: Make a Gift unlearning 21

experiment and play 239. Activity: Make a Sculpture of Contrasts going back to basics 25

a. citizens of the universe 2510. Activity: What Voice Do Letters Speak In?11. Activity: The Bare Necessities of Type12. Activity: Making Masks

b. speaking without words 2913. Activity: Take the Colour-Shape Test14. Activity: Hearing Pictures and Seeing Sound15. Activity: Take a Line for a Walk16. Activity: A World in a Painting17. Activity: The Writing on the Wall18. Activity: Words Without Meaning19. Activity: Colour Light Play

c. form = function 3520. Activity: Remaking the Game

curriculum links 37places to visit 38

Farkas Molnár, Design for a single-family house, 1922Bauhaus-Archiv BerlinPhotograph: Markus Hawlik

Front cover:Edmund Collein, Extension to the Prellerhaus.From 9 Jahre Bauhaus: Eine Chronik (9 yearsBauhaus: a Chronicle), a set of works madefor Walter Gropius on his departure fromthe school, 1928. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin.Photograph: Markus Hawlik © UrsulaKirsten-Collein


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the exhibition map

1. Activity: Make Your Manifesto

2. Activity: Reflecting on Utopia

3. Activity: Reorganising Reality

4. Activity: Shadow Maps

5. Activity: The Invisible Tool

upper level

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lower level

6. Activity: Picturing the Utopiaan Object was Designed For

7. Activity: Make a Celebration

8. Activity: Make a Gift

9. Activity: Make a Sculpture ofContrasts

10. Activity: What Voice doLetters Speak in?

11. Activity: The Bare Necessitiesof Type

12. Activity: Making Masks

13. Activity: Take the Colour-Shape Test

14. Activity: Hearing Picturesand Seeing Sound

15. Activity: Take a Line fora Walk

16. Activity: A World ina Painting

17. Activity: The Writingon the Wall

at a glance

18. Activity: Words WithoutMeaning

19. Activity: Colour Light Play

20. Activity: Remakingthe Game

The activities can be doneat home, work, school orcollege, before or after yourvisit to Bauhaus: Art as Life.

Many of the activities referto works in the exhibition,although please do not carryout practical work in thegallery itself.


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All Bauhaus students were required to work through the segments of thecurriculum wheel, passing from the basic (preliminary) course to the vitalcore at its centre – contributing to the total building.

Walter Gropius, Diagram of the Bauhaus curriculum, 1922Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin © DACS 2012

key words

Avant-garde – meaning at the vanguardof culture, avant garde refers to the pioneeringartistic movements of early twentieth-centurymodernism. The most influential avant-gardemovements for the Bauhaus were Expressionism,Constructivism and Dada.

Bauhaus – the name of the school, but also itscreative and educational philosophy, methodsand styles. The Bauhaus was founded in the cityof Weimar in Germany in 1919. It moved tothe city of Dessau in 1925 and then to Berlin in1932, where it was closed down by the NationalSocialists in 1933.

Bauhauslers – staff and student members ofthe Bauhaus. This term may include the familiesof the staff who also lived at the Bauhaus. Theprogramme of public events for this exhibitionincludes talks by those who lived at the Bauhausas children.

Friends of the Bauhaus – The Bauhauspioneered a new model of a modern democraticuniversity based on collaboration betweendisciplines. It drew important supporters who lenttheir name to its cause by officially becomingFriends of the Bauhaus. Albert Einstein wasamong them.

Gesamkunstwerk – ‘total work of art’in which all art forms are integrated.

Pedagogy – the philosophy, strategies andmethods of a particular style of teaching.

Preliminary course – every student, regardlessof existing skill or training, needed to pass throughthis course in creative experiment before goingon to a specialist workshop to train in makingartworks and products. The preliminary course isalso referred to as the basic or foundation course.

Unlearning – the Bauhaus pedagogical stylethat aimed to replace received knowledge withknowledge gained from experiment andpersonal experience.

Workshop – each student who had passedthrough the preliminary course then joined aspecialist workshop to train for three more years.Each workshop was taught by a leading avant-garde artist in collaboration with a technical orcraft specialist. The workshops included weaving,wood, metal and ceramics.


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key people bauhaus directors

Walter Gropius(1883 Berlin, Germany – 1969Massachusetts, USA) ‘The ultimate goal of all art is the building!The ornamentation of the building wasonce the main purpose of the visual arts,and they were considered indispensableparts of the great building…’

The founding Director of the Bauhaus whosemanifesto of 1919 set the vision and curriculumfor the school. His influences remainedthroughout the duration of the school.

Hannes Meyer(1889 Basel – 1954 Lugano, Switzerland)

‘The people’s needs instead of the need for luxury!’

Gropius appointed Meyer as Director ofthe Bauhaus, Dessau in 1928, where hiscommunist-leaning leadership was effectiveand productive although he was removedfrom office in 1930 for political reasons. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe(1886 Aachen, Germany – 1969 Chicago, USA)

Appointed to replace Meyer in 1930, Mieseducational style was traditional architectualtraining rather than the forms of learning that hadprospered at the Bauhaus. Despite his carefulpolitical postioning and moving the school toBerlin, he was unable to save the Bauhaus fromclosure in 1933.

As creative autonomy was important at theBauhaus, there were as many education methodsas there were masters. In the first years of theBauhaus, rather than refer to teachers and pupils,the terms apprentices, journeymen and masters/master craftsmen were used, with exams at eachstage of progression. As a result, a number ofoutstanding journeymen became masters.

Josef Albers (1888 Bottrop, Germany – 1976 Connecticut, USA)(Bauhaus years 1920 – 1933)

A furniture designer and educator, Alberswas initially a student of Itten’s basic coursein Weimar, before teaching the preliminarycourse in Dessau from 1923. He soon becamemaster of the glass workshop, which hetaught until the Bauhaus closed in 1933.

Herbert Bayer(1900 Haag, Austria – 1985 Santa Barbara, USA)(Bauhaus years 1921/2 – 1928)

A Bauhaus apprentice for four years, Bayerwas appointed director of the printing andadvertising workshop in 1925. He designedthe famous ‘universal typeface’ of simplelooking letters that is so familiar to us now.

Marianne Brandt(1893 Chemnitz – 1983 Kirchberg, Germany)(Bauhaus years 1924 – 1929)

A product designer, Brandt studied in Moholy-Nagy’s metal workshop and became an expertin technical artistry from lighting experimentsto functional tea sets. She designed the lightingfixtures at the Bauhaus School in Dessau and ledthe metal workshop in 1928.

Marcel Breuer(1902 Pécs, Hungary – 1981 New York, USA)(Bauhaus years 1920/1 – 1928)

Breuer was a student of Gropius’ carpentryprogramme until 1924, when he came to leadthe workshop until 1928. His tubular steel ‘clubchair’ (1925) remains an icon of Bauhaus designas it was the first chair of its kind for domestic use.

Lyonel Feininger(1871 – 1956 New York, USA)(Bauhaus years 1919 – 1933)

An established artist in Weimar, Feininger’swoodcut image of a cathedral is the mainillustration of Gropius’ founding manifesto for theBauhaus in 1919. One of the schools first masters,he directed the printmaking workshop until 1925and his children were also students at the school.

Johannes Itten (1888 Süderen-Linden – 1967 Zürich, Switzerland)(Bauhaus years 1919 – 1923)

As one of the first Bauhaus masters Itten madea significant contribution to the Bauhaus. Hedevised and taught the preliminary course, aswell as directing a majority of the workshops.He is said to have had a monk-like presencebecause of his religious conviction.

Wassily Kandinsky (1866 Moscow, Russia – 1944 Paris, France)(Bauhaus years 1922 – 1933)

Kandinsky was a master of painting at theBauhaus for most of it’s existence, teachingworkshops on wall painting then free painting.From 1922 to 32 he taught the abstractform and analytical drawing component ofthe preliminary course and his well-knownpaintings remain influential today.

Paul Klee(1879 Münchenbuchsee – 1940 Muralto,Switzerland)(Bauhaus years 1920 – 1931)

Klee was director of a number of the workshopsover the years, including book binding, freesculpture and artistic design, design theoryfor weaving and elemental design theory inthe preliminary course from 1921 to 30. Hisplayful approach to creative work is evidentboth in his celebrated painting career as wellas the hand puppets made for his son, Felix.

László Moholy-Nagy (1895 Bácsborsód, Hungary – 1946 Chicago, USA)(Bauhaus years 1923 – 1928)

Moholy-Nagy directed the preliminary course andmetal workshop for five years from 1923, whilehis own work focused on experimental film andtypography. He published a series of Bauhausbooks to promote their ideas, which includedsalient publications by both Klee and Kandinsky.

Gunta Stölzl(1897 München, Germany – 1983 Zürich,Switzerland)(Bauhaus years 1919 – 1931)

Stölzl began as an apprentice on the preliminarycourse, glass and wall painting workshops. Asa skilled weaver, she was appointed masterof form for the Bauhaus weaving workshopin 1925, and directed the workshop from 1926-31 – the only female master at the Bauhaus.Her graphic textiles designs remain influentialand still look contemporary to this day.

Oskar Schlemmer(1888 Stuttgart – 1943 Baden-Baden)(Bauhaus years 1921 – 1929)

Schlemmer is perhaps best known for his Bauhausstage work including extraordinary costumesand avant-garde performances. He was oneof the first Bauhaus masters, initially leading thewall painting, stone sculpture and life drawingclasses. He contributed much to the importantBauhaus exhibition of 1923 and his ethos wascentered on the theme of ‘the human being’.

http://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/walter-gropiushttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/hannes-meyerhttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/ludwig-mies-van-der-rohehttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/josef-albershttp://http//bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/herbert-bayerhttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/marianne-brandthttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/marcel-breuerhttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/lyonel-feiningerhttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/johannes-ittenhttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/wassily-kandinskyhttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/paul-kleehttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/laszlo-moholy-nagyhttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/gunta-stoelzlhttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/oskar-schlemmerhttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/oskar-schlemmerhttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/gunta-stoelzlhttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/laszlo-moholy-nagyhttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/paul-kleehttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/wassily-kandinskyhttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/johannes-ittenhttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/lyonel-feiningerhttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/marcel-breuerhttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/marianne-brandthttp://http//bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/herbert-bayerhttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/josef-albershttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/ludwig-mies-van-der-rohehttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/hannes-meyerhttp://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/walter-gropius


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an introduction to the exhibition

Bauhaus: Art as Life explores the world’s most famous modern artand design school. It is the biggest Bauhaus survey staged in the UKin over 40 years. From its avant-garde arts and crafts beginnings,the Bauhaus shifted towards a more radical model of learninguniting art and technology. A driving force in the development ofModernism, it sought to change society in the aftermath of WorldWar I, to find a new way of living. This major Barbican Art Galleryexhibition presents the pioneering artistic production that makes upthe school’s turbulent fourteen-year history from 1919 to 1933 anddelves into the subjects at the heart of the Bauhaus – art, design,people, society and culture.

Bringing together more than 400 works, the exhibition features arich array of painting, sculpture, architecture, film, photography,furniture, graphics, product design, textiles, ceramics and theatreby Bauhaus masters including Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Walter Gropius, WassilyKandinsky , Paul Klee, Hannes Meyer, Ludwig Mies vander Rohe, László Moholy-Nagy , Oskar Schlemmer, JoostSchmidt, Gunta Stölzl as well as students such as Anni Albers, Marianne Brandt, T. Lux Feininger, Kurt Kranz, XantiSchawinsky and Alma Buscher.

Bauhaus: Art as Life is a Barbican Art Gallery exhibition producedin co-operation with Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin/Museum für Gestaltung,Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau and Klassik Stiftung Weimar.

an introduction to the learning resource

The Bauhaus school encouraged its students to be independent inthought and spirit, and to enrich their whole life through creativeexperiment. Inspired by them, the ideas here are designed to helpyou make your own way through Bauhaus: Art as Life, and devise aself-led tour for yourself, friends or students.

The exhibition is set out loosely in order of historical events, andgrouped by connected ideas and themes. This resource focuseson creative learning ideas, most of which you can explore throughmultiple examples. For that reason the order of this resource doesn’tdirectly follow the order you’ll encounter artworks in the gallery.For a map of the exhibition that shows the location of the artworksdiscussed here, see ‘At a Glance’ on page 3.

This learning resource sets out key Bauhaus ideas: reorganisingreality, unlearning, stripping back to basic principles andcelebrating life. The school’s approach centred on unlocking thecreative potential of individuals so that they could work at theirbest on collaborative projects. Their ideas changed our world. Thediscussion and activities that follow are designed to help us explorewhether Bauhaus ideas still have value and power for us.

Emma Ridgway, Creative Learning curator, and Cathy Haynes,independent curator and educator (writers)


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a creative revolution

Can you imagine a different way of life in thefuture? How do you want things to go? What doyou want to make happen?

We live in a time of great transformation anduncertainty. Right now a revolution in educationis gathering force. Public cultural institutions areplacing learning events on an equal platform tothe arts and the objects they show, lead educatorsare calling more loudly for creative teachingmethods and innovations in digital technologyare giving us new ways to educate ourselves.This is in response to dramatic changes takingplace in technology, economics, politics and theenvironment. Each of us has a role in respondingto the challenges that these changes bring. Ourcreativity is the most powerful resource we’ve got.Learning creatively – throughout our life, not justat school, university or work – sparks our ideasand develops our skills for helping to shape thefuture. If you think the world is perfect already,stop reading now. If not, are you ready to be partof a creative revolution?

To learn creatively is to actively draw lessons fromthe culture that’s around us. It is to be criticallyaware of the stories that are being told in thearts and in the media. It is also to be self-directedin what we learn – not to be told what to thinkor do, but to learn for ourselves by questioningassumptions and creating new things. To adaptto the changing world, there are ideas we’ll needto ‘unlearn’ – things we might have been taughtthat could be outdated, too rigid, or comfortablebut stuck. Unlearning is an art-school skilldesigned to help us experience the world afresh.It complements expertise and mastery and isagainst learning by heart. To unlearn involves re-imagining things as if starting from the beginning,to strip away influences and habits of mind, thento experience things in the present, reflect on howthey are and imagine how they could be different.

Imagination isn’t confined to children, artists orvisionaries. We can each be rich in imaginationand take responsibility for how we interpret thepast and shape the present. Those who drivechange do it by imagining and believing in analternative future reality. Walter Gropius (1883– 1969), founder of the Bauhaus School in 1919,had a vision for how the arts – painting, sculpture,design, theatre, weaving, architecture – shouldwork together to improve the way we all live.

In Europe at that time, high art was consideredseparate from everyday life, and largely reservedfor the rich. Industry and capitalism were takingover from craftsmanship and manual skill.Gropius believed that to change things, creativeworkers needed to learn in a new way. He wasactive in the education debates of his day andwas influenced by the English artist and activistWilliam Morris (1834 – 96), whose idea thatthe arts could significantly improve people’sexperience of life is still influential today. Whenthinking about combining crafts and artistry,Morris looked back to the mediaeval guild system,where craftsmen worked together on improvingtheir skills and joint creative production. The pastis not better than the present, but recognisingwhat’s changed, and why, can sometimes helpus to imagine a better future. This is long termthinking, which propels revolutionary ideas.

The Bauhaus and its creative education methodsteach us that we need to be highly aware of ourpresent environment and circumstances beforewe can improve them. To continually renew ourunderstanding of the present, we must keepunlearning the old ideas that we no longer need.We can do this by asking questions about thedeep assumptions lying beneath our beliefs andactions. We can do this through play, experimentand gathering experience for ourselves, withoutfollowing a predetermined plan. Learningcreatively in these ways is not traditionaleducation, where knowledge is learned by rote.It is a continuous form of learning that we can dofor ourselves – alone or with others – and we cando it all our life.

Otto Umbehr (Umbo), Josef Albers and students in a group critique at the Bauhaus Dessau, 1928–29

The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation© Phyllis Umbehr/Galerie Kicken Berlin/DACS 2012


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why the bauhaus still matters

The Bauhaus was an attempt to make a new lifefor everyone at a time when the old certainties ofcommunity, work and belief had been shattered.After World War I, society was divided and inconflict. Young people, especially, faced thefuture alternatives of unemployment or grim andunrewarding work. Workers short on time, energyand resources had been reduced to buying poor-quality mass-produced goods and entertainmentrather than creating them for themselves.

Like the slapstick character that Charlie Chaplinplays in Modern Times (1921), the creative spiritof the worker was becoming trapped in themachine. As the English philosopher BertrandRussell argued in the 1930s, the pressure inindustrial society to measure every activity by howproductive we are reduces us to machines: withoutthe space and time to pursue curiosity and playfor our own pleasure throughout our lives, wecan’t flourish or fulfill our human potential.

But Russell saw industry as the way to free usall, because it could reduce working hours. Hehoped it would liberate us from a life of passiveconsumption into one of creative action. TheBauhaus, too, saw technology as potentiallyliberating. It aimed to merge art, science andtechnology to transform the possibilities for abetter collective life.

Back in 1919, under such overwhelmingcircumstances, many people may have felt that thetask of changing the state of things was just toobig. But rather than feel defeated, the Bauhaustransformed the spirit of its age. It turned artand design into philosophy and social action. Itmade creativity the medium through which weadapt and shape reality, rather than just recordit. And it saw that the urgent challenges of itstime demanded collaboration and conversationbetween people from all backgrounds andspecialists from all fields.

The exhibition invites us to imagine life at theBauhaus. This is not about indulging nostalgiaand simply admiring the past for its own sake,but seeing its ideas as still alive with potential.In the 1930s the German philosopher WalterBenjamin encouraged us to engage deeply withthose moments of the past that resonate with ourown. Imagining the past and empathising withthe people who lived it gives us a way of standing

outside our present and looking back in. It letsus see what else might have been and still mightbe, rather than feeling tugged along by forcesthat we think are outside our control. Letting ourimaginations roam history for ideas can helpus expand our vision for how we might activelychange the present to create a better future.

The Bauhaus project remains unfinished. TheNational Socialist militia forced the school to closein 1933. Many of its staff and students were underattack and left the country. They took Bauhausideas with them and gave them new life in otherplaces. The exuberant potential of these ideashas yet to be fully explored. We can still takeinspiration from them. But does that mean weshould simply imitate the Bauhaus style?

Rather than looking for the Bauhaus spirit intubular-steel chairs and white cuboid buildings,we’re more likely to find it in today’s onlinecollaborative economy of sharing knowledgeonline, the rise in educational gaming and thegrassroots use of social networking sites that haveinspired nonviolent protest around the world.

T. Lux Feininger, Sport at the Bauhaus/Jump over the Bauhaus, c. 1927

Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin © Estate T. Lux Feininger


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imagining utopia

What do you call something when there isn’talready a name for it? How do you find the wordsto bring something entirely new into being?

When the visionary architect Walter Gropiuswas invited in 1919 to merge the Academy ofFine Arts and the School of Applied Arts inWeimar, he could have done the usual thingand called it an Academy of Art and Design. ButGropius’s masterstroke was to express his vision ina single word that could be applied to everythingfrom its mass-produced products to its educationmethods to its college band. The word ‘Bauhaus’is made up of bau, which means building in thesense of creating, and haus, which means bothhouse and spiritual home. In one powerful word,Gropius had given form to his radical vision formerging all artistic fields and integrating themwith everyday life through the collaborativeactivity of building.

Gropius first introduced the word Bauhaus in1919 in his manifesto for the school. The manifestobegins with a visual expression of Gropius’s idealsby Lyonel Feininger. Inside, on page two, Gropiuswrites a text in response to the image, calling for‘a new building of a new future, which will beeverything in one structure’. Then on page threehe sets out his plan for how this is to be achieved.

Other manifestos were created at the school.One made by students in 1922 contained a linethat the Bauhaus would adopt as its guidingmantra: ‘Art and Technology: A New Unity’. TheBauhaus manifestos were attempts to bring theschool’s vision into reality. They were expressionsof a utopia, an ideal world of the future. Toimagine such a new world, we need to examineand understand the one we live in now. This is whyso much of the work at the Bauhaus was basedon testing ideas through experience. The mostpowerful utopian ideas are based on what mightreally be possible.

1. Activity: Make Your Manifesto

To a greater or lesser extent, all of us live underthe direction of a manifesto. Each ruling politicalparty’s manifesto shapes policy and law oneverything from how and what we are taught atschool to our right to copy and share ideas. Thisexercise is about creating the manifesto that youwant to live under, which may differ from the oneswe have been given. It is a big task and takes time.It can be done alone, in pairs or a group. And itcan be returned to and reshaped again and againin response to changing ideas and reality.

Gropius’s enduring question was ‘How dowe want to live?’ How would you answer?What do you want to put in your manifesto?

A manifesto is a way of getting other peopleexcited about your idea for how things couldbe better. It is a powerful way of explaining yourideas and persuading others to get involved too.To make your manifesto, first work out whatyou want to change about everyday life. Startby making a list of things that you think shouldchange, for example, ‘I don’t think people shouldfight each other’ or ‘Everyone in the world shouldhave enough to eat’. Don’t be put off by the beliefthat your dream of change is too big. Throughouthistory, from votes for women in political elections,the end of apartheid in South Africa to thelegalisation of gay marriage in some US states,people have changed the world in ways that werepreviously thought impossible.

After you’ve worked out what you want to change,decide how you’re going to persuade othersto join you in making it happen. Here are threestrategies for how you could do that. Choose theone you think will be the most effective way to winothers’ support.

a. Write your manifesto in the style of protestbanners and T-shirt slogans. For example,‘no more war’ or ‘end poverty’. Thesemessages are powerful, short and direct butdon’t leave space to explain how to makechange happen in detail.

b. Make a poetic, philosophical appeal topeople’s imaginations for how things couldchange, inspired by the civil rights leaderMartin Luther King who began his world-changing speech with ‘I had a dream…’

c. Write a pamphlet like Gropius’s. Start byimagining what the future would look like ifthe changes you want to make to the worldactually happened.

– Draw a picture of your ideal world anddescribe it in words in a way that will inspireothers to get excited about making it happen.Before you start, ask yourself: If your nation ortown was organised around these ideas, whatwould it look like? What would the buildings belike? What do people do there? Does everyoneeat together? Are there schools? What makesthem better than schools today? And so on.

– Once you’ve worked out what it is and howto make it happen, give your vision a name.Make up an inspiring name for it if the rightword doesn’t already exist (as Gropius did with‘Bauhaus’). Remember, the right name will drawothers to look at the manifesto. An unappealingname will draw less interest.

– Describe how you’re going to make this worldhappen by asking yourself what everyonewould have to do. For example, to end poverty,would you make rich countries send food tothose in famine, or would you have them helpthose countries grow their own crops? Whatare the benefits and pitfalls of your strategies?How can you get round them?

d. Finally, ask other people to read yourmanifesto. Do they agree with you? Ask them toexplain their response to it. Do they have ideasto add to yours? Use debate and conversationin this way to develop your ideas and refineyour manifesto.

2. Activity: Reflecting on Utopia

A discussion and reflection exercise in the gallerythat complements the manifesto-making activityabove. They can be done in either order.

Look out for examples of the Bauhaus identityin the exhibition. What do they say about theBauhaus? How do they change over time? Whatdoes that suggest about how the Bauhaus schoolchanged?

The Bauhaus manifesto gives a vision of a‘utopia’, that is, an imaginary world designed toshow how our present could be better. The wordutopia means both ‘good place’ and ‘no place’.

Why do you think that is? What happens toutopian visions once you try to make them real?Is it worth trying to build a utopia even if you don’tknow whether you’ll succeed?

What do you believe is stopping you from tryingto change your world? Who can you ask to helpyou? How can you let them know you want theirhelp and encourage them to believe in yourvision?

3. Activity: Reorganising Reality

An exercise in collage-making based on analysisof examples in the exhibition.

Collage is a technique that can be used toquestion how things are. This is done byreorganising newspaper and magazine imagesto question the truth of the stories presented in thepress. See Marianne Brandt’s collage It’s a Matterof Taste, for example. The picture is a commenton the belief that women choose certain kinds ofwork because it suits their taste. Brandt’s ironiccombination of title and image exposes that theyweren’t given a choice.

Look closely at the collages in the exhibition.Examine how the artists have taken pictures fromthe magazines and newspapers of the day andreorganised them.

How are the different pieces placed in newrelationship and tension with each other? Whatis the effect of different styles of images beingplaced together?

What meaning does that give them? For example,does tension in the composition point to politicaltension in real life?

Are there lines of direction in the composition?What effect do they have? For example, do theygive a sense of movement?

Make a collage from images that you’ve cut frommagazines and papers to make a picture storythat shows something that concerns you about lifetoday, or that shows how life ought to be.


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the school that changedeverything

Gropius had a radical vision for what art andartists could be. The old art academies had kepta strict partition between the fine arts (sculptureand painting) and applied arts (architectureand design), and between theory and practice.But at the Bauhaus, painters and sculptors wereencouraged to work in the fields of architecture,textiles, theatre, dance, film, furniture, graphics,advertising and photography. Gropius wasinspired by the idea, taken from opera andtheatre, of the ‘total work of art’, where all artforms work together. For him, making a buildingwas the ultimate way to create a ‘total artwork’.

Much school activity was directed towards thejoint project of actually making a building.What’s more, this building was an experiment inexpanding human potential. The total artworkwouldn’t stop at integrating art forms. It wouldmerge art and life too. All the Bauhauslers –students and teachers – cooperated to transformeveryday existence by redesigning everything intheir new community from the floor plan to thedoorknobs.

It wasn’t until the Bauhaus relocated in 1925 fromWeimar to the city of Dessau that it could finallybuild its own purpose-designed community.The school building was constructed and fittedby the Bauhauslers. It included a canteen, atheatre, houses for students and faculty to livein and a flat roof that accommodated gamesand performances. We might expect so manyhands to make a patchwork of a result. But theRussian writer Ilya Ehrenburg wrote that the newBauhaus building seemed ‘cast of one piecelike a persistent thought’. A Bauhausler laterremembered that when one of the woven textilesespecially designed for the director’s office waslater changed for another, the room lost its feelingof completion.

living in utopia

The Bauhaus buildings were designed to enablebetter ways of life. The main buildings had bigsociable corridors. The Masters’ Houses includedshared communal spaces between families. Thesebuildings brought to life the modernist architectLe Corbusier’s influential idea of the house as a‘machine for living’. This replaced the industrialmachine, which limited the potential of its workers,with an architectural machine that liberated life.It also reorganised the hierarchy of lived space tobe more democratic. The traditional structure ofa planned city is a fan shape organised arounda centre of power, for example, the palace. TheBauhaus later develops machine-like motif: thegrid, which has no centre.

But such a strong formal idea did not mean thatthe spaces were cold and inhuman. We tend tothink of Bauhaus architecture as uniformly white,setting the tone for modernist architecture later inthe twentieth century. But Bauhaus architecturaldesigns made dynamic and playful use of colourto create spatial effects and a sense of movement.Here is a description from the plan for the Dessaubuilding:

Directional arrows and lines indicate routes tothe workshops and departments, each bearinga characteristic colour. The design differentiatesbetween load-bearing and non-bearing surfaces,thereby endowing the architectonic tension withlucid expression. The spatial effect of the coloursis heightened by the application of a variety ofmaterials: slick high-gloss, polished, granular, andrough plastered surfaces, dull matte and high-gloss coats of paint, glass, metal, and so on.*

In reality this plan wasn’t followed in full. But themasters coloured their Dessau homes with theirown distinctive choices. Kandinsky opted for blackand gold interiors.

4. Activity: Shadow Maps

As well as shape, colour and texture of surface,the effects of light were thought to be as mucha part of the architecture of Bauhaus buildingsas concrete and steel. For this reason, Meyer’sarchitectural designs include maps of thechanging position of the sun over the seasonsand the buildings’ exposure to its light.

Inspired by Meyer, make a study of how sunlightand shadow fall into a room or over a building.

You can do this on different scales:

– stand a pencil upright (with its base in tack) ina window.

– choose a window through which sunlight isthrowing a bright reflection on the floor.

– find a strong shadow from a building.

– Then mark the movement of light bytracing its shadow on paper or chalkingaround it on the ground every hour.

At the end of the day, take a photograph ofyour drawing.

How does making this drawing increaseyour awareness of the shifting light?

Does changing light have an effect on yourmood? If so, how does it make you feel?

Do you think light should be thought of as abuilding material just like stone and wood? Why?

Is the building you are in right now designedto make the best use of light? Is thereanything in its design that you’d change?

5. Activity: The Invisible Tool

Everything about Bauhaus life was designedto set people free, from women’s dresses tothe way a door opens. In 1926, Breuer createda ‘film strip’ that showed what the Bauhausaimed for. The work presents ‘a history ofsitting’, with each chair depicted becominglighter and more streamlined as the centuriespass. The final strip shows a person seatedon nothing but air. It illustrates how we mightfeel once our tools have become so perfect intheir function that we no longer notice them.

This exercise is inspired by Breuer’s invisiblechair. Select an everyday tool. It couldbe a phone, a kettle, or a social networksite. Think about what it lets you do.

What is its function? What power does it give you?If it was replaced with a super power or animalpower, what would that be? For example,without your phone would you be able to listento someone in another city with just your ears?Make a drawing of that super power.

Is there a difference between this idealsuper power and what the tool lets youdo in real life? If so, what is it?

For example, does your social networksite let you describe yourself in theway you would most like to?

Or does it limit your choice andemphasise some things over others?

If so, why does it do that?

How does that affect the way we thinkabout ourselves and our friends?

What would be better? Make a list and/or drawa picture of how your tool could be improved.

* From the Bauhaus building’s ‘chromatic orientation plan’, quoted in‘Function and Color in the Bauhaus Building in Dessau’ by MonikaMarkgraf in Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin et al(ed.s), Hatje Cantz, 2009, p.197.


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6. Activity: Picturing the Utopiaan Object was Designed For

A longer noticing and drawing activity.

This task is designed to help you detect the utopiandreams hidden inside ordinary household objects.

Select one of the older objects in yourhome, especially one that looks a bit out ofplace amongst your things – for example,a lamp, table, radiator or picture.

Look at the object away from the other thingsthat are usually around it. Put it against a blankwall or piece of paper if that helps. Handle it andmake a sketch of it to really get a sense of it.

Now think about what kind of personthis object was designed for.

What kind of life would they have?

What would they like to do for fun?

What would they wear?

What would they like to eat?

What would their home look like?

What would their other belongingsand furniture look like?

What colours, shapes and patternswould the furniture have?

Next, draw that person beside theobject you’ve already sketched.

Then draw in their home aroundthe person and the object.

Compare your drawing with yourreal home. How different are they?What do the differences tell you?

7. Activity: Make a Celebration

A theatre design activity resulting in either a realor an imaginary social event.

The Bauhauslers celebrated anything that gavethem a cause to throw a party, from colleaguesreceiving citizenship to the birth of a child. Partiesmarked important events and helped to releasesocial tension and to build bonds betweenteachers and students. Festivals such as kite andlantern processions also created links with thelocal community.

The parties and celebrations became artworksand total theatre in themselves. For example,for the ‘White Party’, everyone was given theloose theme of spots and stripes. For their mostspectacular party, the ‘Metal Party’, guests woretin foil and metal objects. They entered the roomin tin toboggans and clattered up the stairs onsteps that were rigged to make different metallicchimes. The walls were covered in metal plates,like distorting mirrors.

Taking inspiration from this, plan your owncelebration. Decide what your theme will be.What kind of costumes will you suggest yourguests wear? Leave it open enough to give themroom to be really playful. Make sure it’s easy todo with cheap materials and scrap.

What themed music will you play? Plan how willyou decorate the space.

Design your flyer and poster to advertise theevent.

If you hold the party in real life, notice how yourguests interpret your instructions.

Do they dress up and act the way you expected?For example, does your shy friend act moreconfidently when in costume? Does someoneyou think of as a safe dresser wear the mostoutlandish outfit in the room?

What does that say about their personalities?

Does it reinforce or undermine how you thoughtabout each person before they came?

How does it feel to let other people play with yourideas and take them on as their own?

Would you run a party like this again? If so, whatwould you do differently?

8. Activity: Make a Gift

A craft activity that can done alone or in a group.

The Bauhauslers gave each other a lot of gifts.Often they were artworks or furniture that they’dmade in the workshops. One teacher madeindividual certificates for her students by hand.On Gropius’s 44th birthday, all the Bauhauslersadded their lip-prints to a card. The neweststudents’ kisses are all out of kilter with theneat grids of their trained seniors. On Klee’s50th birthday, some Bauhauslers even hired anaeroplane to drop a large parcel of presents intohis garden.

You might not be able to hire a plane, but whatpresent can you make to surprise someone with?It doesn’t have to be their birthday. It could beanother special event. For example, has someoneyou care about achieved a challenge they wereworried about? Celebrate what they’ve doneby making them a card or a present. This couldbe an individual gift or one you involve otherpeople with, so you express your gratitude orcongratulations as a group.

How does it feel to give a gift or card that you’vemade yourself?

What was the reaction of the person whoreceived it?

Do you think they valued it more or less becauseit was hand made?

What should we value more, the time someonehas put into making something by hand or themoney they spent on it? Why?

Do we value money too much some times?Give examples to explain your answer.

Lucia Moholy, Walter Gropius’s director’s office, 1924–25Reprinted in Neue Arbeiten der Bauhauswerkstätten, 1927Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin© DACS 2012


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unlearning

At the traditional fine art academies studentswould have spent their training copying paintingsand sculptures by the Old Masters. The closeststudents got to that at the Bauhaus was toexperiment with tracing over reproductions of OldMaster paintings, analysing them geometricallyand mathematically to explore their fundamentalforms. In other words, rather than bow downto the old authorities, the Bauhaus took theirmasterpieces apart and reassembled them intosomething completely fresh. This impulse to getback to something more basic behind traditionalforms was driven by a scepticism towards the oldregimes of knowledge and power. This scepticismlargely came from a distrust of the culture of thepast that had allowed or even led to mass conflicton an unthinkable scale. In response, the schoolwanted to give its students the chance to startagain, to get back to a lost innocence, through themethod of unlearning.

Johannes Itten, Colour sphere in seven light stages and twelve tones ,from Bruno Adler, ed., Utopia. Dokumente der Wirklichkeit (Utopia:Documents of Reality ), 1921Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin© DACS 2012

Every Bauhaus student started with thepreliminary course: a period of creativeexperiment. Through repeated exercises theywere trained to unlearn rigid habits gained, forexample, from specialising as a painter. Suchhabits could block perception by emphasisingwhat you see over other sensations, and bybuilding up routine ways of looking. Thepreliminary course aimed to train students tounlearn their received knowledge and badhabits, and relearn through their own experience.Unlearning focused on the body and on sensoryexperiment, reconnecting body and mind. Alberscalled this ‘seeing by doing’.

The preliminary course was influenced by Asianphilosophies that, unlike the Western tradition,do not perceive a split between body and mind.Itten began his classes by focusing on the wholebody. He would lead the students in stretching andbreathing exercises like those done in Yoga. Afterthis they would do a quick-fire expressive drawingexercise to wake up the mind and senses. Forexample, they would be asked to draw a dramaticscene, such as a storm. The idea was not to drawwhat they saw directly, but make what they sawflow through the whole body, and let that feelingdrive what they made or drew.

Itten would train his students’ sensory perceptionby having them touch a range of textures withtheir eyes closed. ‘In a short time’, he wrote,‘their sense of touch improved to an astonishingdegree’. Moholy-Nagy, who later taught thepreliminary course, developed touch panels –‘charts’ of textures – that his students used to testtheir responses to different sensations. He arguedthat touch is our primary sense, but the mostneglected by the language of art, and particularlyunder threat in modern times, no doubtbecause experience of the world was becomingincreasingly filtered through text and image.

That the methods of unlearning were seen asa challenge – or even a threat – to mainstreamsociety and education is clear: middle-classGerman parents would tell their children, ‘If youdon’t behave, I’ll send you to the Bauhaus’.


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experiment and play

Bauhaus students were as likely to work with scrap as withtraditional art materials. For example, they would experiment withwire mesh, cardboard, plastic, tinfoil, matchboxes, glass and sheetmetal. Albers describes how his students tested the properties ofpaper ‘by sewing, buttoning, riveting, typing … pinning’ and manyother ways of fastening it. He explained that through these activities:‘we do not always create ‘works of art’, but rather experiments; it isnot our ambition to fill museums: we are gathering experience’.

Why was it so important that students should play with materialswithout needing to complete an artwork or product? One answeris that it was a way of unlearning the need to measure all humanactivity against its usefulness for war, for industry, or for the market.In the philosophical tradition of Friedrich Schiller and Jean-JacquesRousseau, Bauhaus education placed its focus on the innate talentsand fascinations of the student, rather than assessing them againsta standard measure of knowledge imposed from outside. It alsoemphatically encouraged collaboration rather than competition.

Free experiment fuelled the ‘possibilities for free creativity’, wroteAlbers. He believed that learning how to invent through the processof discovery was the basis of ‘training for every kind of design’.This learning, he said, was best done through ‘undisturbed,uninfluenced’ experimentation. It meant beginning by workingwith the material in a ‘purposeless, playful’ way with the hands.

These lessons in free experimentation carried over into the differentspecialist workshops. For example, Stölzl led her students awayfrom the tradition of making a woven picture by encouragingthem to experiment with weaving as a technology. To do this theyused a handloom, even though their designs would be producedby machine. This hand-led experimentation resulted in radicalcompositions that would not have come from simply drawinga design onto paper.

Breuer, too, applied the lessons of Bauhaus experiment to hisproduct designs by exploring the potential of existing materials andtechnology, and collaborating with others from different specialisms.For example, the inspiration for his tubular-steel chairs came froma bicycle frame. He then called on the help of the local aeroplanefactory to help him develop his designs.

9. Activity: Make a Sculpture of Contrasts

A longer sculpture and drawing exercise.

Itten thought that all forms can be reduced to aseries of oppositions. For example, colour, marks,texture can be described as large or small, thickor thin, surface or line, horizontal or vertical, a lotor a little, straight or curved, long or short, broador narrow, smooth or rough, sharp or blunt,hard or soft, see-through or opaque, continuousor broken up, and so on. Itten would guide hisstudents to make sculptures from things that theyfound lying around that played on these contrasts.He believed that this was the way to discoverthe basic laws of creativity that would help hisstudents throughout their lives.

Try making a sculpture from scraps that playsupon a contrast of qualities. (Note that theBauhaus workshops always used everything upand never left waste.)

If you do this as a group, first create your ownsculpture away from the group. Then cometogether to discuss and choose whose sculpturehas the best range of contrasts within it.

Then sit down together to draw that sculptureto explore its contrasts further.

What did you experience during this process?What did you learn?

Has making this study enhanced your awarenessof the difference in materials around you in everyday life? If so, how?

Do you think it’s possible to discover the basiclaws of creativity from repeatedly doing thisexperiment? Do you think such laws exist?


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going back to basics

Bauhaus attempted to pare back form andfunction to its basic elements. It wanted to scrapeaway false ideals and inessential elements fromart and design that had accrued over history.

As you explore the exhibition, you’ll see thedifferent ways in which Bauhauslers attempted todo this. There is a striking contrast, for example,between subjective, expressive works that areintended to affect us like a kind of lighteningconductor for primordial experience, and thosethat try to use scientific objectivity to refine andgive life to the ‘true’ principles of form.

This section explores three Bauhaus strategies forliberating form and function by going back tobasics, and suggests activities to put their ideasto work.

10. Activity:What Voice do Letters Speak In?

A craft and typography exercise that requires theuse of a computer and printer, or copying by handfrom a type book.

How successful was Bayer in creating a visual‘voice’ for the Bauhaus? To find out, compareexamples of his Universal typeface in theexhibition with how the word ‘Bauhaus’ lookswhen written in the typeface Fraktur, above.

Imagine if the Bauhaus had used Fraktur.Would that have affected how it saw itself?

What kind of school would it have been if itsgraphic identity had been Fraktur?

Type the word(s) for your favourite food. Changeit to a typeface that fits it well. Then copy it andchange it to a second typeface that fits it badly.

Look at them together. What feelings and ideascome to mind when you look at the first, thenthe second? How does type design affect themeaning of the word? When you next read amenu, think about whether the typeface matchesthe kind of food it offers.

The neuroscientist Leonard Mlodinow argues thatthe typeface a menu is set in, not just the way it isdescribed, actually affects how we taste the food.In your experience, do you think he is right?

a. citizens of the universe

After the horrors of war, many at the Bauhausactively resisted expressions of national identityand hoped to create a world in which bordersbetween people no longer mattered. They alsowanted to make design universally legible byremoving cultural associations and nationalsymbols from the design of objects. In this way,design became a form of social action and aphilosophy of identity.

If you look at some of the examples of Bauhausadvertising in the exhibition, you’ll see figureswearing masks or with their identifying featuresblanked out through negative exposure. This isone way in which the Bauhaus experimentedwith removing racial or national identity from itsdesign. Another is Bayer’s attempt to strip backlettering to its essential geometric forms, removingall trace of handwriting or cultural symbol. Hewanted to clean away anything that wasn’tessential to the alphabet’s most basic function:to translate sound into graphic marks. He evenrefused to give his Universal typeface capitalletters, arguing that there is no capital letter inthe spoken word. He hoped his simplification oflettering would make be easier for machines toprint, and for everyone to read and use.

By doing this he was taking an active stanceagainst the most commonly used Germantypeface, Fraktur, which had become associatedwith a nostalgic German national identity, andincreasingly with National Socialist ideas.

Bauhaus


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12. Activity: Making Masks

An activity is based on analysis of the works inthe exhibition followed by a making exercise anda simple social experiment.

Look for examples of masks in the exhibition.Why do you think they are being used? What dothey say about the person wearing them? Whatcharacter do they have?

Make a simple mask from a circle of paper withholes for your eyes. Draw on it if you like. Fix stringor elastic through holes in the sides and tie itloosely round your head.

11. Activity: The Bare Necessities of Type

A typography exercise that does not requirea computer.

Albers also developed an alphabet that simplifiedits form dramatically. Look at his cut-out letteringin the exhibition. Each letter is created simply bycombining two or more of the ten forms that makeup the top line.

As a warm up exercise to start thinking abouthow much or how little we need to see of ordinarywords to be able to read them, try this quickexperiment:

Cover the bottom half of a word, what effectdoes that have? What happens when you coverthe top half?

Now, taking inspiration from Albers’ alphabet,experiment with how few shapes you need tomake up the letters of your name. Try to keepyour shapes and combinations as simple aspossible, while making sure other people canstill read the letters.

How much detail can you loose before the lettersbecome meaningless?

Josef Albers, Bauhaus lettering set , 1926-31

© The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and DACS, London 2012

Erich Consemüller, Lis Beyer or Ise Gropius in B3 club chair by Marcel Breuer wearing a mask by Oskar Schlemmer and a dress fabric designed by

Lis Beyer, c. 1927 Herzogenrath, Berlin. On long-term loan to Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Bestand Museen © Estate of Erich Consemüller

What do you feel when you wear it? How doothers react to you? How does it feel to watchothers and be watched? Do you feel more or lessfree? Why?


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b. speaking without words

The painter Kandinsky believed that art shouldconjure up in us an experience ‘beyond thereach of words’, rather than giving a pictureof something that can be named or described.Through this he hoped to find a basic form ofcommunication that speaks to us at a moreprimary level than words. For him, this kind ofabstract art was an attempt to resist words andpictures and replace them with effects that workeddirectly on the body and the mind.

13. Activity: Take the Colour-Shape Test

A simple drawing activity that is ideal for doingin the exhibition, using a photocopy of thetriangle, square and circle below for each person.To discover the basic building blocks of what hethought of as a pre-verbal language, Kandinskytried to establish a universal human associationbetween basic shapes and colours.

He had varying success. On one occasionhe attempted to prove it with a collectivepsychological test. He gave all members of theBauhaus the following questionnaire to fill in. Itcontained a triangle, circle and square. The taskwas to colour each in with the primary colour thateach shape seemed to suggest.

Try Kandinsky’s test yourself.

Fill each shape opposite with the colour you mostassociate with it.


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Now look at the works by Kandinsky in theexhibition.

Most respondents agreed with Kandinsky’s colourchoices. Do your colours match his?

Do you think we do all associate the same coloursto shapes? Or is it possible that everyone whofilled in Kandinsky’s questionnaire was alreadyinfluenced by his own well-known colour-shapecombinations?

Kandinsky tried to detach colours and shapesfrom representing anything that could be named.But still he described blue as heavenly and yellowas earthy. Do you think it’s possible for an imageever to be completely free of seeming to look likesomething else? When you look at Kandinsky’spictures in the exhibition, do the abstract shapesremind you of anything? What associations dothey have for you?

Look at the other colour experiments in theexhibition – for example, those by GertrudArndt. Do the colour and shape combinationscreate effects that aren’t real, such as depth ormovement where it doesn’t really exist?

Try experimenting with putting different colourcombinations together yourself. What effects canyou find?

14. Activity: Hearing Pictures andSeeing Sound

A choice of composition and drawing exercises.

Kandinsky believed that the experience of sound,colour and shape were connected by sensation.He could hear colour and made ‘polyphonicpaintings’ – that is, pictures that made him feelas if he was hearing them as music.

Make a piece of music for a picture in theexhibition – tap out its rhythm and make a tunethat follows the shapes, colours and moods ofthe painting.

Or, listen to a piece of music and see if you candraw it. What shape is it? Does it have patternsand colours? How do your marks on the pageshow its rhythm?

How do these experiments change yourexperience of the artwork they are based on?Do you look at the other artworks differently now?If so, how?

Wassily Kandinsky, Circles in a Circle, 1923Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950

© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2012


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18. Activity: Words Without Meaning

A quick and easy spoken word exercise you cando anywhere.

In a volume of his poetry, Kandinsky invites us torepeat words until they lose their meaning andare experienced as abstract sound. Try it out witha word you use every day.

Does the experiment work?

How do you feel when you hear the word now?

19. Activity: Colour Light Play

A craft and theatre activity with an optionalmusic element.

Notice how many works in the exhibition play withlight. What is their effect as you walk through thegallery?

One of the most significant experiments withlight is Reflecting Colour Light Play for whichKurt Schwerdtfeger choreographed projectedcoloured light to make spatial forms and movingpatterns. These created abstract effects that weredesigned to be enjoyed as a theatre show.

Experiment with everyday materials to createlight effects. Pierce a piece of card with holes in apattern. Make a larger opening in the card andcover it with a clear plastic sweet wrapper. Coveranother opening with clingfilm. In a darkenedroom, shine a torch behind the card onto a wall.

What effects can you create?

Can light be a theatre show in itself? Do you needto make a story to go with it to enjoy it, or does ithave its own kind of fascination? How would youdescribe this?

What happens if you play different kinds of musicduring the same part of the show? For example,a sad folk song followed by a fast upbeatelectronic track. How does the change in musicchange your experience?

15. Activity: Take a Line for a Walk

A simple drawing exercise.

Klee approached abstraction differently from hisfellow painter Kandinsky. Where Kandinsky wouldoften explore his subject with several studiesbefore he made a finished work, Klee wouldnever make a study. Instead, famously he wouldoften begin a composition simply by starting aline on the page and following where it went. Hedescribed this process as ‘taking a line for a walk’(Pedagogical Notebook , 1925). This walk wasjust for itself, setting out with no particular aim inmind. Make a mark on the page and let it flow. Whereare you going to take it for a walk? If you see ashape start to form, will you finish it? Or will youmove on and follow the line just for itself?

When you’ve finished your drawing take time toreflect on it.

How did it feel to work this way? Give three wordsthat describe your experience.

Did you draw differently from usual? Did it feelliberating or restricting to work this way?If so, how?

16. Activity: A World in a Painting

A storytelling activity you can do in the gallery.

Examine a painting by Klee. Look at what he doeswith the paint. Is it scratched and scraped? Is theperspective realistic? Are the forms familiar? Doesit represent something outside of itself that’s real?Or is this a world of its own?

Describe what happens in this picture. Who livesin it? What happens there?

17. Activity: The Writing on the Wall

A craft and design exercise that can be doneusing a computer and printer, newspaper and aphotocopier, or simply paper and pen.

Look at the works in the exhibition by Hajo Rose.He typed letters in repeated formations to createdesigns for cloth and wallpaper. By clusteringthem into patterns that play with their shapesrather than what they represent, the letters andnumbers lose their meaning.

Play with type in this way and see what patternsyou can make.

What happens when you look at letters onlyfor their shapes and how they work together aspatterns, rather than what they mean as words?

Are they still letters, or do they just becomeshapes? Do they still have their old meaning,do they get new meaning or do they have nomeaning? Why?

What light does this exercise throw on thischallenging philosophical question:What is the connection between languageand reality?


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c. form = function

In the nineteenth century the furniture designerand social visionary William Morris arguedthat we have become ‘the tools of our tools’.He believed that the industrial machine wasmaking people into slaves, either as workers orconsumers. Inspired by him, the Bauhaus wantedto liberate people by refining the function of toolsuntil they could no longer notice them.

Hartwig’s chess set is a clear example of formstripped back to match its function as closelyas possible. The design ignores the traditionalornamentation and figurative elements thatyou would normally see on a chess set. Instead,the chess pieces have simple shapes and aredesigned to show how they move across theboard. Looking at the set in the exhibition, see ifyou can work out what kind of movement eachpiece makes by how it looks.

20. Activity: Remaking the Game

A game design exercise that can be done asa craft or computer-based activity.

Can you apply Hartwig’s techniques to anotherboard game you play?

Start by thinking about what changes to thegame would make it easier to understand. Makesketches of your ideas by trying out differentdesigns on paper. For example, design newsymbols for the game’s pieces that make it clearerwhat they do (without making it too easy to play).

Try taking out anything from your design that youdon’t need to play the game. See how simple youcan make it. You may need to keep redrawing it tosee how far you can pare it back.

When you’re happy with your new design, redrawthe board. Next make new models of the playingpieces from whatever materials you have to hand(Blutack, modelling clay, cardboard shapes withdrawings, and so on).

Test it out by getting your friends to play it withyou. Ask them whether the changes are workingfor them and gather their suggestions.

Later, tweak your design to make it even better.

How does it feel to play the game with your newdesign?

Does your design change the game’s meaningin any way? How?

The sphere on the queen shows that this piece ishighly mobile. The bishop, in contrast, is carvedwith a cross. The primary meaning of the crossis that it makes diagonal movements. Its olderreligious meaning is no longer central.

You don’t need to know the rules of chess to graspquickly what movement each piece can make.This means that it’s no longer a game limited tothose who’ve been taught its rules. In theory this isa game that everyone can play.

Hartwig experimented with a number of differentdesigns. The later versions even remove the littleplinth beneath each piece. Gone, too, is thetraditional velvet-lined wooden box with a placefor each piece in order of aristocratic importance.In Hartwig’s cheap cardboard box the pieces slotsnuggly together without hierarchy: the pawns areno longer at the bottom.

The associations with war and power are erasedfrom this game of chess and replaced with afresh set of possibilities. If the old games of chesstrained us for battle strategy, this new designimagines a future of equality, and of play, not war.

Josef Hartwig, Chess set (model XVI) with cardboard box designed by Joost Schmidt, 1923–24. 32 pieces: pear wood, cardboard and paperCentre Pompidou, Paris. Musée National d’Art Moderne /Centre de Création Industrielle. Gift Clarence Westbury Foundation © DACS 2012


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places to visit

buildings

The Bauhaus Building, Dessau, GermanyFor visitor information visit the website

Lawn Road Flats, Hampstead, LondonWhere Gropius, Breuer and Moholy stayed. WellsCoates designed the flats and Breuer designedsome of the furniture. It was one of the fewmodernist buildings in London at the time.

Impington Village College, CambridgeshireGropius designed it with Maxwell Fry. Theywere commissioned by the local chief educationofficer. This rural college was designed to bean education and arts centre for the wholecommunity, from children to the elderly. Itbecame a model for modernist school-buildingsconstructed after the war in the UK.

The Red House (National Trust), Bexley This is the only house that William Morrisdesigned himself. It is considered one ofthe most important influences for modernistarchitecture: Morris intended that nothing wouldbe included that didn’t have a purpose or provideornamentation without reason. It was purpose-built to include spaces for communal living, play,work and reflection.

historical references

Bauhaus-onlineThe world’s biggest Bauhaus online resource

Bauhaus: Art as LifeThe catalogue of the exhibition

Weimar Republic Source Book A book of original documents from 1915 – 1933in English

curriculum links

This resource focuses on Bauhaus pedagogyand creative learning, rather than its practicalworkshop techniques such as textiles, engineeringand metal work. The creative and reflectiveactivities we have suggested here are intended tosit across subject areas so you can tailor them toyour teaching agenda.

In his seminal 2009 book Visible Learning, JohnHattie explains how teaching has most impactwhen both the learning intentions and successcriteria of a challenging task are made veryclear by the teacher, followed by lots of peerdiscussion and practical involvement, resulting inachievements that are new to the students. Thisis close to a description of Bauhaus pedagogyat its best. We can draw on its ideas to expandour own learning and teaching styles. In today’sterms Bauhaus may be referred to as experientiallearning, with an emphasis on co-learning.Although as an education professional you candraw your own conclusions about the success ofthose methods when you see the exhibition.

This is an exhibition of great richness and depth.The ideas and activities offered here can only everpresent a small sample of its potential. You mayfind you are inspired to create your own activitiesand exercises in response to the exhibition.

Art and Design – all activities

Citizenship – activities: Make Your Manifesto,Reorganising Reality, Make a Celebration, Makea Gift, Making Masks, Remaking the Game

Design and technology – all activities

Drama – activities: Make Your Manifesto, Makea Celebration, Making Masks, Words WithoutMeaning, Colour Light Play

English and Modern Languages – activities:Make Your Manifesto, The Invisib ile Tool, WhatVoice Do Letters Speak In?, The Bare Necessitiesof Type, The Writing on the Wall, Words WithoutMeaning

Geography – activities: Make Your Manifesto,Reorganising Reality, Shadow Maps

History – activities: Make Your Manifesto,Reorganising Reality, Picturing the Utopia anObject was Designed For, What Voice Do LettersSpeak In?

ICT – activities: Expanding New Technology, TheInvisible Tool, Picturing the Utopia an Object wasDesigned For, Remaking the Game

Music – activities: Make Your Manifesto, WordsWithout Meaning, Colour Light Play

contemporary references

Changing Educational Paradigmsby Ken Robinson, 2010Robinson’s witty animated talk about the needfor radical changes in education today

Rethinking Learning: the 21st Century Learner by the MacArthur Foundation, 2010A short video on the value of learning from theUS creative foundation

Visible Learning A synthesis of over 800meta-analyses relating to achievement by John Hattie, 2009Hattie’s big book of evidence about what is(and isn’t) effective in teaching

Imagination, How Creativity Worksby Jonah Lehrer, 2012A vital new book on how our brains work andhow to make creativity work for you

Mindsets: on how the two mindsets influencebehaviour and achievement by Carol Dweck, 2011Psychologist Dwecks’ ‘mindset’ concept isparadigm shifting

Cognitive Surplus, Creativity and Generosity ina Connected Ageby Clay Shirky, 2010Shirky shows that we are changing how we useour time and technology today

Play is more than funby Stuart Brown, 2008A talk on Brown’s significant insights about playbeing essential to our lives Cultural Learning AllianceUK’s current campaign for cultural learningThe UKs leading campaign with resources andlinks to cultural institutions

How Technology Evolvesby Kevin Kelly, 2006Kelly’s ideas on technology have beeninfluential for decades

You know more than you think you do: design asresourcefulness and self-relianceby Emily Campbell, 2009A clear statement of why learning about designremains important for citizens today

http://www.bauhaus-dessau.de/index.php?enhttp://www.bauhaus-dessau.de/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isokon_buildinghttp://www.impington.cambs.sch.uk/about/about-us/history-and-ethos.htmlhttp://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/redhouse/http://www.bauhaus-online.de/enhttps://www.barbican.org.uk/eticketing/shop.asphttp://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520067752http://www.thersa.org/events/video/animate/rsa-animate-changing-%20paradigmshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0xa98cy-Rw&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0xa98cy-Rw&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0xa98cy-Rw&feature=relatedhttp://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-Analyses-Achievement/dp/0415476186http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-Analyses-Achievement/dp/0415476186http://www.jonahlehrer.com/books/imagine/http://www.jonahlehrer.com/books/imagine/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26h02O1B3eohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26h02O1B3eohttp://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cognitive_surplus_will_change_the_world.htmlhttp://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cognitive_surplus_will_change_the_world.htmlhttp://www.ted.com/talks/stuart_brown_says_play_is_more_than_fun_it_s_vital.htmhttp://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_7/Cultural%20Learning%20Alliancehttp://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_kelly_on_how_technology_evolves.htmlhttp://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/215457/RSA_designandsociety_pamphlet.pdhttp://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/215457/RSA_designandsociety_pamphlet.pdhttp://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/215457/RSA_designandsociety_pamphlet.pdhttp://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/215457/RSA_designandsociety_pamphlet.pdhttp://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_kelly_on_how_technology_evolves.htmlhttp://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_7/Cultural%20Learning%20Alliancehttp://www.ted.com/talks/stuart_brown_says_play_is_more_than_fun_it_s_vital.htmhttp://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cognitive_surplus_will_change_the_world.htmlhttp://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cognitive_surplus_will_change_the_world.htmlhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26h02O1B3eohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26h02O1B3eohttp://www.jonahlehrer.com/books/imagine/http://www.jonahlehrer.com/books/imagine/http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-Analyses-Achievement/dp/0415476186http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-Analyses-Achievement/dp/0415476186http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0xa98cy-Rw&feature=relatedhttp://www.thersa.org/events/video/animate/rsa-animate-changing-%20paradigmshttp://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520067752https://www.barbican.org.uk/eticketing/shop.asphttp://www.bauhaus-online.de/enhttp://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/redhouse/http://www.impington.cambs.sch.uk/about/about-us/history-and-ethos.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isokon_buildinghttp://www.bauhaus-dessau.de/http://www.bauhaus-dessau.de/index.php?en


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booking

booking a group visitContact the Groups Booking LineTel: 020 7382 7211(line open 10am–5pm, Mon–Fri)Fax: 020 7382 7270

Email: [email protected] are welcome, although we wouldencourage you to avoid weekends and the busyperiod of 12.30 – 2pm. A maximum group size ofabout 20 is suggested.

exhibition admission pricesStandard: £10 online/£12 on the doorConcessions: £7 online/£8 on the doorSecondary school (groups of ten or more) £6 eachAge 13–17 £6 online/£7 on the door

Ages 12 and under free

onlinebarbican.org.uk/artgalleryphone0845 120 7511 (9am – 8pm daily)in personArt Gallery Ticket DeskOpen daily 11am – 8pm (except Wed 11am–6pmand Thu 11am–10pm)

planning your visit

how to find usNearest tube stations: Barbican, Moorgate,St Paul’s, Liverpool Street.Nearest train stations: Liverpool St, Farringdon,City Thameslink, Barbican, Moorgate.Coach: there is a setting down and picking uppoint in Silk St. Parking is limited to the meteredbays in Silk St and Fore St. For further informationcontact 020 7606 3030, asking for Parking

Services.

disabled visitorsFor full Access information please visitbarbican.org.ukYou can also call or email the Barbican AccessManager on [email protected],020 7382 7348.

cloakroomsThere is a free cloakroom on Level 3 by the Art

Gallery.

cafes / packed lunchesIf you have brought packed lunches you can eatin the Stalls Floor Foyer (Level –1), the Main Foyer(Level G) or outside on the Lakeside where thereare plenty of picnic benches and tables. BarbicanFoodhall, just off the Foyer on Level G, offers fullmeals as well as sandwiches, drinks and also

children’s meals. It is not suitable for large groups.

further informationMedical assistance and full evacuation staff areavailable at all times. The Creative Learningdepartment has a full CRB child protection policy.If you would like to see the full policy and riskassessment information, please contact CreativeLearning on 020 7382 2333.

contact

We would welcome feedback on this learningresource and the exhibition. Please send yourfeedback to Creative Learning administrator.T: 020 7382 2333 F: 020 7382 7037E: [email protected]

creditsWritten by Emma Ridgway and Cathy HaynesCopy Edited by Melissa Larner

barbican guildhall / creative learning

Barbican CentreSilk StLondon EC2Y 8DST: 020 7382 2333F: 020 7382 7037E: [email protected]

The City of LondonCorporation is thefounder and principalfunder of theBarbican Centre
mailto:[email protected]://%20barbican.org.uk/visitor%D0%A9nformation/disability%D0%A1ccessmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://%20barbican.org.uk/visitor%D0%A9nformation/disability%D0%A1ccesshttp://%20barbican.org.uk/visitor%D0%A9nformation/disability%D0%A1ccessmailto:[email protected]