Abstract
The word ‘Bauhaus’ goes back to the medieval idea of the ‘Bauhütte’ and can be translated as ‘building site office’ or ‘stonemasons’ guild’. Either way, it denotes an institution that brought skilled craftsmen together for the management of a larger project – like a cathedral. But the Bauhaus that flourished in Germany from 1919 to 1933 and was most obviously catalysed by ‘a utopian, post-war spirit of renewal and optimism’, also took its strength from the work of an international complex of proto-Modernist architects and designers that included William Morris (1834–96), Otto Wagner (1841–1918), Hermann Muthesius (1861–1927), Peter Behrens (1868–1940) et al. But the so-called ‘International Style’ that was developed by the Bauhaus artists also owed much to a commitment to modernity and the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk (the Total Work of Art involving the harmonious synthesis of all the arts) that Richard Wagner (1813–83) and Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), the leader of the Blaue Reiter group in Munich who was a resident Meister at the Bauhaus from early 1922 to school’s closure, had developed in their theoretical writings and aesthetic practice.
The Modern(ist) Bauhaus had three lives: (1) as the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar, the birthplace of German Classicism, from April 1919 to February 1928 with Walter Gropius (1883–1969) as its Director from 12 April 1919 to 12 March 1925; (2) on a purpose-built campus designed by Gropius in the industrial town of Dessau on the Elbe from 1925 to 1932 – where, in 1926, it changed its name to the Hochschule für Gestaltung – with Hannes Meyer (1889–1954) as its Director from 1 April 1928 to 1 April 1930; and (3) in a reclaimed telephone factory at 49, Birkbusch Straβe, Berlin, from 1932 to 1933 with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1929) as its Director from 1 April 1930 to 20 July 1933, when it dissolved itself because of increasing pressure from the Nazis. The geographical moves and the intellectual and political diversity of its leading figures meant that the Bauhaus was an ‘eclectic assemblage’, whose focus shifted over time. Gropius, who had absorbed the teachings of German Classical Humanism, tended towards a more conservative Modernism and believed that it was ‘the moral duty of the architect to find architectural solutions to social problems’, and according to the reviewer of the ‘New Architecture’ exhibition that took place in the New Burlington Galleries, Cork St, Mayfair, W1 from 11 to 29 January 1938, ‘no living artist has addressed himself to [that task …] with more learning and taste’ than Gropius (see The Times, 13 January 1938, p. 10).
But Johannes Itten (1888–1967), who directed Gropius’ innovative and highly disciplined preliminary course from 1919 to 1922, had an esoteric view of art that derived from Zoroastrianism; Meyer was a hard-line Communist; and van der Rohe was a firm believer in the autotelicity of art. But at the core of Bauhaus teaching lay the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, and this was reinforced by a commitment to the harmonious synthesis of function and design, to formal simplicity without ornament, and to the use of modern materials and construction techniques.
When the Bauhaus closed, its students and faculty dispersed throughout the world, and as they included more than a few people of Jewish extraction, many fled to a Palestine which was, from 25 April 1920 to 15 May 1948, mandated to British administration. Which explains why the densest collection of Bauhaus buildings – more than 4000 from the 1930s – is in the White City area of Tel Aviv and why the Bauhaus Museum is also located there at 21, Bialik St. But in the Bauhaus centenary year, the editors of this Gallery Guide – which is, though brief, more informative than many a larger exhibition catalogue – have used RIBA’s ‘unique and well-known collections’ to examine the four years when ‘Britain became modern’. By which they mean the period when British architects who were already enthusiastic about continental Modernism despite living in an architecturally conservative country benefited from the presence of three Bauhaus refugees: Gropius (a Gentile), Marcel Breuer (1902–81), a former student and teacher at the Bauhaus who renounced the religion of his ancestors in order to marry a Gentile, and László Moholy-Nagy (né Weisz; 1895–1946; Jewish).
Gropius and his wife and co-worker Ise Gropius (née Frank (1897–1983)) arrived at Victoria Station via Rome on 18 October 1934 and left Britain for the USA, where Gropius had become Chairman of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, shortly after a memorable farewell dinner on 9 March 1937 in London’s Trocadero Restaurant, Coventry St, W1 (fl. 1896–1965). Breuer’s reputation as a designer of Modernist furniture was well established before he landed in Britain in 1935 but in late December 1937 he followed Gropius to Harvard as Controller of Design. Moholy-Nagy arrived in Britain via Amsterdam in 1935 and emigrated to Chicago in 1937 to found the New Bauhaus (aka the American School of Design).
The RIBA exhibition consists of three ‘Chapters’, the first of which introduces us to some of the foremost proponents of architectural Modernism in 1930s Britain who were in significant contact with the three Bauhaus refugees. In 1931, Jack (John Craven) Pritchard (1899–1992), a furniture manufacturer who specialized in Modernist work, had, together with the Canadian architect and designer Wells Coates (1895–1958), visited the Dessau Bauhaus where glass was used extensively. So he knew the three refugees by reputation at least when they arrived in Britain and gave them temporary rent-free accommodation in his premier construction project, the Lawn Road Flats, in Belsize Park, Hampstead, NW3 (completed 1929, renamed Isokon Flats in 1931, formally opened on 9 July 1934). This large block of 32 Modernist flats had been designed by Wells Coates & Partners (Isokon since 1931 (short for Isometric Unit Construction, a name that evoked Russian Constructivism)) in accordance with a brief from Pritchard’s wife Rosemary (née Cooke (1900–85), a bacteriologist who later became a psychiatrist). During their construction, the flats were systematically photographed by the Bauhaus-trained photographer Edith Tudor-Hart (née Suschitzky (1908-73)) who, incidentally, also worked as an unpaid spy for the Soviet Union and later helped in the recruitment of the Cambridge Five. The Isokon Flats soon became ‘an oasis for European refugees and a melting pot for left-leaning thinkers and intellectuals’, foremost among whom was, perhaps, the anarchist, poet and aesthetician Herbert (later Sir Herbert) Read (1893–1968). He owned examples of Breuer’s Modernist furniture, and because his influential book Art and Industry: The Principles of Industrial Design (1934) prioritized the necessary unification of artistic design and industrial technique, it came very close to Bauhaus thinking.
Even before Gropius’ emigration, Ian (later Sir Ian) MacAlister (1878–1957), the Secretary of RIBA from 1908 to 1943, co-operated with the pro-Modernist journalist and architectural critic Philip Morton Shand (1888–1960) to prepare the exhibition of c. 170 photos, drawings and diagrams by Gropius that took place in RIBA’s premises between 15 and 26 May 1934 and was described by The Times correspondent as ‘one of the most important exhibitions ever held in London’ (The Times, 16 May 1934, p. 14). In 1935 Pritchard made Gropius Controller of Design for Isokon, a post that Marcel Breuer inherited from February to December 1937 after spending his first two years in England in partnership with F[rank] R[eginald] S[tevens] Yorke (1906–62). Yorke was one of the earliest British architects to be interested in Modernist design and became a founder member and the Secretary of MARS (The Modern Architecture Research Group; 1933–57), a think tank that sought to support Modernist artists who were trying to make their way in Britain. Between 1936 and 1939 Yorke and Breuer co-designed at least five buildings in England, and Yorke’s The Modern House in England (Architectural Press, 1934) included illustrations of buildings that had been designed by other members of MARS. Wells Coates and Morton Shand were also founding members of MARS, as was [Edwin] Maxwell Fry (1899–1987), who set up a joint practice in London with Gropius from October 1934 to 1936, during which they co-designed at least four buildings, one of which never materialized. By 1937, MARS had more than 60 members, including several women, and from 11 to 29 January 1938 the group achieved its greatest success by means of a show at the New Burlington Galleries entitled ‘New Architecture’ (see The Times, 13 January 1938, p. 10). This exhibition not only showcased Modernist architecture, it also, thanks to Godfrey Samuel (1896–1996), a leading member of the Tecton Group of radical architects (1932–5) that played a major role in introducing continental Modernist ideas to Britain, was able to do so via radically modern display techniques.
Although Moholy-Nagy had an established reputation as an experimental visual artist before his arrival in Britain, he was unable to find financial backing for the design of an English building and was unsuccessful when he applied for a teaching post at the Royal College of Art. Nevertheless, Isokon employed both him and his second wife Sibyl (née Pietzsch (1903-71)), an architectural and art historian, to design marketing material, and at about the same time, Frank Pick (1878–1941), London Transport’s first Chief Executive, who was particularly interested in developing its underground network and had a lively interest in modern design, commissioned Moholy-Nagy to produce three Modernistic posters on behalf of London Transport.
The Second Chapter focuses on the visual impact of the new architecture, both interior and exterior, including that of its accompanying furniture and fittings. The curators also identify some of the changes that Britain brought about in Breuer’s style. It caused him to move from tubular steel furniture to a softer kind that was made of bent plywood and to introduce flowing curves into his buildings. Moreover, they point out that Modernist design in Britain during the 1930s acquired a ‘uniquely British flavour’ by moving away from the ‘white box’ aesthetic and ‘towards the use of brick, wood and natural stone’ with which the British public was already more familiar. The Third Chapter deals with the new architecture as a therapeutic response to social conditions, and although Bauhaus refugees were, thanks to friends like Yorke and Fry, much more likely to obtain individualized commissions from wealthy provincial clients than socially significant commissions from collective institutions like towns, universities and hospitals, the editors single out Impington Village College, near Cambridge (completed 1939), as Gropius and Fry’s most important project. Impington College, which has been described as an example of ‘functional beauty set into the landscape’, implicitly served several social purposes: it promoted the children’s welfare by replacing dark, cramped Victorian rooms with spaces that constituted more generous working conditions, gave them direct access to nature and exposed them to a maximum of daylight; the College was also to function as a meeting place that brought together all sorts and conditions of people. Denys (later Sir Denys) Lasdun (1914–2001), a proponent of Bauhaus ideas, may well have had similar therapeutic ideas in his mind when he created a Modernist version of Sumerian Ur on the rolling banks of the River Yare in the early 1960s. Whether he would have recognized those ideas now in UEA’s crowded Kasbah – with its stained concrete buildings, bursting car parks, cluttered views across the banks of the River Yare, and mélange of architectural styles – is a problem that is open to speculation and debate. But is not that the way of all utopias when they cannot remain the natural habitats of the very rich and are forced to concede to social necessity?