The Bauhaus & Black Mountain Colleges

Notes and interpretation from a lecture by Spencer Roberts.

The 'framework' of the Bauhaus movement.

• -This framework came from the work of John Dewey in 1920s,
• - we can Learn a lot about the educational frameworks of contemporary art establishments and teaching schools quite well from these early movements.
• - Furthermore, this demonstrates the concept of multiplicity discussed in an earlier lecture particularly well and we can look deeper into the consolidated views of the 1800s - 1900s, and how that foundation of practice, particularly post 1850s, turning into the fractured way of the early 20th century.

From Henry Bergson's book, he explains..
        "The concept of Multiplicity can be shown [physically], by spreading your hand and really focussing hard, pushing all your energy into your little finger.  keep pushing the imaginary energy, keep on...".
        By doing this little exercise, you can imagine a feeling of energy [starting] in your little finger, however, overtime all your muscles will get involved throughout your body in the excercise of pushing, pushing pushing.... All these singular feelings concentrated and combining together. This has a 'feeling' in itself, both 'experiential' and 'interrogate-able' tensions, which provides an excellent example of Multiplicity and what it means as a form of analogy.

        For example, look at the film; "This is what democracy books Like" (Made just before 9-11 Attack on the New York Trade Centre).  This is a classic example of Multiplicity.
What the makers of this film were trying to say was that the idea of democracy is really about people disagreeing things. The essence on point of the film is to express a lack of consensus / a lack of unity, which illustrates further the concept of multiplicity.  On otther words, - we can either emphasise the 'unity', or alternatively, we can focus on the 'disorder', within the complexity of multiplicity. In this example it is easy to start unpicking the core components of it.

The idea that we need to accept an account of a "ordinary" experience is to be explored...
But Dewey's argument, - that one has to fashion their own world around them, - "working with intelligence" as he said, with pragmatic ideas rather than rational and historical references.

• Dewey's "looseness" in how we can experiment in things 'however we want', 
• are put into practice at the Bauhaus, Germany, 
• and also the Black Mountain College, USA, 
• but they are both very different in the way Multiplicity is practised.

    
Starting with the Bauhaus (which was first to be established as a new school for Modern / (At that time, contemporary art). It deals particularly in building & Architectural experimental methods.

• The Bauhaus philosophy and teaching practice was hugely influenced by Joseph Albers, but also by Lasso Mahony-Nagy.  It was originally Johan Itten who provided the initial agenda for the school, which was based on "The direct interaction of us in the material world", 
• In other words, we learn to appreciate and do create art through "A Tactile" experience; - By pulling the materials together to create a perception from the filtered out experiences;
• This "filtered" approach, together with lots of experimentation, came through significantly at the Bauhaus and argues that 'new experiences' coerce and come from these filtered tactile singularities. 
• New sensations and singular sensational experiences therefore come as a new "sharpened and refined view of the world."... -This was Itten's legacy.
• It should be noted at this point, (during the early 1930s, Joseph Albers was at the Bauhaus school and was indeed one of Itten's students.

        Both were very interested in colour theory,

"Simultaneous contrast is not just a curious optical phenomenon, -it is at the very heart of painting..." ( said Joseph Albers).

• Albers is interested in the relativity of colours, and the phenomenon of simultaneous contrast (see the colour experiment field..)
• Albers "Field of relations" provides various interactions of colour forces. 

 The Bauhaus used to set various experiments which Albers argues was stalest teaching people to see. He had hard time with many of the American Expressionists at the time, and didn't agree with the concepts of emotions and moods etc
Lasso Mohony-Nagy, another key tutor and influencer at the Bauhaus explored the aesthetic and communicative properties of material through which the Bauhaus created a DESIGN philosophy.

        Then the war happened.... -So Albers upped sticks and emigrated to the USA,  to both study and teach at the Black Mountain College;- 

The Black Mountain College;

• The BMC was originally a humanities school,.. 
• John Dewey had direct involvement of the college and visited the community several times.
• They focussed on 'collaborative community' and upon "the process", rather that the outcome or results.
• there was no grading structure either, what later came out of the school was very different from the Bauhaus.
• Buckminster Fuller - created his first geodesic designs there. 
• John Cage also attended and performed his" first happening performance art in 1952.
• However the Links between institutions continued with the focus on experiential and materialistic techniques.

        BMC was a much more open environment and had a stronger attachment to the culture
of the day.
        - One point to note about that particular era in the BMC was that of Albers and Eva Hess (who attended Yale).  They had an interesting relationship to say the least. - He loved her work, but she found him overbearing and difficult, and yet she learned so much from his attitude towards experimentation, For example, see the n Anti-form exhibition which included her and Richard Serra works.

( See also, Cy Twombly, Stanley Vearndeek and other students of BMC).

Both key institutions that shared about 75% of their thoughts, however they made very different impacts on future art.  The Bauhaus was about learning, sharing and propagating Art disciplines whereas BMC was really a school of art which encouraged it's participants to truly learn about freedom, and freedom of expression.

  It is particularly interesting that both of these schools seemed to have a direct and total connection to the prevailing culture of the counties in which they were situated.  In other words, Bauhaus stood for German cultural desires of discipline, whereas the BMS stood for America's anti-comunist, and anti-faschist liberalism and so ultimately, freedom.