Fourteen Years That Changed the World (The Bauhaus Experiment)

The Bauhaus

ARE 6048 Jonathan Sanchez

The Bauhaus Fourteen Years That Changed the World

The Bauhaus represents a fascinating intersection between an intense search for a new pure design and form of art education and often free experiential learning. Johannes Itten and Paul Klee two Swiss artists and art theoreticians both wrote and approached art as a lifelong spiritual journey. Though Itten imposed his own brand of geometry to present an underlying order in art and color theory, Paul Klee sought to tap into a kind of Jungian intuitive or childlike approach. Somewhere between the two was Wassily Kandinsky both free and expressive and at times rigid an orderly in his works, he seems to embody the paradox that was the early Bauhaus.

(This writing was created for a grad art education program through University of Florida the writing is part research paper part answers to discussion questions poised by the instructor)

1. What is the significance of your chosen person or movement to the field of art education (i.e., What’s worth remembering about this person or trend)?

Many university art programs mirror the approach of the school. An emphasis on handwork mixed with intellectual efforts was key to the 14 year long Bauhaus experiment and is often present in modern art schools today. The early program relied on a mix of Eastern Mysticism, experiential learning, and nothing short of a re-thinking of Western Culture from the bottom up. Like the other movements of the time (De Stijl and the International School) Gropius and his followers were reacting to the vast devastation and demoralizing loss of world war one. Seeking to find new symbols, forms of expression, and to reconnect civilization and industry to art, in an effort to save both.

Johannes Itten and the other instructors at the short lived schools would conceive of color charts and wheels, which have stayed with art training into the digital age and still grace Adobe and other programs.

The free association and spiritual searching through abstraction that Klee and Kandinsky pioneered is another important tool that artists can use stemming from the school. Klee in particular placed an emphasis on the art of children suggesting that children know art and traditional schooling and society stamp art out of them. Kandinsky as well collected the art of children and sought to reconnect with natural and spontaneous creations of children.  

There was present a multi-cultural emphasis that was ahead of its time through literature, art even the food and dance of other cultures, Bauhaus students and faculty were thinking globally long before such a term was coined. There was also an underlying lack of vernacular in the abstract art, design, and architecture, which is part of why Hitler hated the school so much, it didn’t represent his view of Germanic culture and his imagined neo-classical so called Third Reich. Part of the romance with the school is this open minded, exploratory nature that many art instructors still seek to emulate almost a hundred years later.   

2. What important books or articles did your person write? Who is the key person(s) associated with your movement?

There are several notables associated with the Bauhaus experiment. Walter Gropius architect, writer, artist, and founder of the movement seems to have been a charismatic and ambitious leader. He later taught in the US at Yale. Two of the most important painters that have ever painted were instructors Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. A lesser known painter and color theorist was also an instructor, Johannes Itten is worth mentioning. The last director (that tried to keep the school together under National Socialist occupation) would later become one of the biggest names in architecture Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and taught in the US as well.  

The Art of Color from Johannes Itten, is perhaps the most celebrated written work of any Bauhaus artist or instructor. It has been printed and reprinted for several generations and is the seminal work on color theory.

3. What ‘big ideas’ did your person or movement contribute to the field of art education? How did this person’s ideas or movement translate into classroom practice?

The work of the Bauhaus instructors is written large into art history, so they are present in many ways. Most students have copied or created a color wheel nearly identical to that of Itten’s. The ideas of mixing techniques, drawing from diverse sources, collaboration as a kind of workshop or team are all present in many classrooms today and can be traced to Bauhaus experiments in teaching. That there is an interconnectedness to all types of art be it textiles, dance, or architecture, is a contribution of the Bauhaus that still exists on some campuses.

4. What else was happening at the time of this person’s contributions (i.e., in America? in general

education? in the world of Art? in the field of art education)?

Early in the school’s founding the remnants of the Gilded Age an emphasis on a bogus neo-classical mindset were still around. As the Jazz Age gave way to the Great Depression, art transformed in America from lively and hopeful to socialist and message driven. In the thirties and forties deco and streamline looks (based on Bauhaus designs) took hold worldwide. New technologies of faster ships and planes and the radio demanded a new aesthetic.

Denman Waldo Ross an art educator in America, echoed the calls of the Bauhaus to think of art holistically. That is to think of design, dance, and drawing as seeking the same goal (Stankiewicz, 94). Formalist theories the likes of which Itten championed, would come into vogue in the 40’s and 50’s in America. Arthur M. Dow in his writings seems to have expressed some of the Bauhaus ideas, of seeking to create art without regional vernacular, and creativity being an essential human trait not bound to anyone culture or race of people (Stankiewicz,90).

The efforts of Ross, Dow, and Ernest Fenollosa share a commonality and are nearly contemporaneous to the De Stijl and Bauhaus in their search for “pure design.” The rhetoric of these three shares some of the idealistic notions that art can change the world re-build the world tone of Walter Gropius (though there is no evidence of an actual connection and the first Bauhaus in Weimar dates to the early 20’s the time of Dow’s demise).

Paul KleeJohannes Itten

Wassily Kandinsky

References

Jordy, W (2005) "Symbolic Essence" and Other Writings on Modern Architecture and American, Yale University Press.

Wick, W. Grawe, G. Rainer K. Wick, (2000) Teaching at the Bauhaus, Distributed Art Pub Incorporated.

Weber, N. (2009) The Bauhaus Group, Knopf/Random House.

Duechting, H. (2007) Kandinsky, Taschen.

Stankiewicz, M. (2001) Roots of Art Education Practice, Davis Publication.

Itten, J. (1997) The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color, John Wiley & Sons.

Websources

http://www.bauhaus.de

http://www.zpk.org

www.museumliner.ch

www.kunstmuseumbern.ch

My Life in Art

My Life in Art

Jonathan Sanchez

Created for ARE 6049

Looking back now, I would say the pivotal moment for me was receiving a sketch pad at about the age of seven. I still have it every page was filled over a summer living with my grandparents. Residing in a little retirement community near Ocala Florida (not the end of the world but you can see it from there) I heard daily about the Great Depression and the Second World War as if they happened a few weeks ago. The pace of life in a retirement community (at about the speed of smell) left a young boy chomping at the bit. My folks going through a divorce and my brother and I dumped on my grandparents doorstep, I discovered through this simple sketch pad I could make the world go away or make entirely new ones. If I would not have had that combustible mixture of mind numbing boredom and confusing gut churning pain, I would have become someone else for certain, but more than that I would never have had found solace and a deep profound connection to art.

The power of art to transform, heal, and transport can only be understood by those that have felt those effects, and of course can’t be overstated. In my own life art has been a constant source of entertainment yes, but dare I say a spiritual or at least meditative and therapeutic quelle.

Earliest Art Exposure

My earliest memories of art in school were marred by needing glasses which my father refused to purchase. A border line dyslexia, acute inability to see straight lines, constituted a learning disability that went un-diagnosed until college. Falling further behind in classes and truly being unable to see well or oft mixing 51 with 15 crippled me in school and again I sought solace in art. Frustration and as one elementary teacher described me, “you have absolutely no sense of color,” led me to believe I would never be able to master art of any kind. Perhaps it was this criticism that fired me, but more it was I think that in my sketch pad, on my time there were no wrong answers or bad art, if it was in my pad it belong there. Thinking back to the humiliation and negative comments I received as a child it is amazing I did not grow up to hate art or want nothing to do with it.

In junior high things began to change my best friend and I would spend a Friday night drawing, copying comic books, things from Star Wars books, geeky sci-fi stuff of any kind, we both challenged each other critique each other and grew as artists. Soon I might be inspired by comic book but I began to create my own stories and characters, my best friend never did and is a commercial artist today.

An aunt I hardly knew gave me a paint by numbers kit of a horse and barn. Something I have never forgotten and think is maybe the second most important moment in my art journey. I could not see remember, the tiny little numbers and shapes seemed to vibrate right off the cardboard canvas making me uneasy. I flipped the thing over and painted a castle, a field billowing clouds, my own fantasy creation. I look back at this as a tiny but irreversible act of rebellion.

Surprisingly my stepmother also loved to draw and paint and supported my efforts. One Christmas I received a tackle box for paints and brushes (which I still use), a cliche little wooden palette and easel. Moving on to painting I again felt that strange sense of being lost in art of forgetting everything being entranced by a painting. The new relationship provided many positive things but also a Southern extreme Fundamentalist Baptist oppression. I learned about censorship and intolerance during those teenage years.

Music was paired with painting but carefully my brother and I hid our records and knew we could not bring certain records home for fear of being caught with them. I had a tiny walkman style radio (which I also had to keep secret for fear of confiscation or worse being made to listen to religious music) it became my sanctuary in a crowded little house in central Florida. Through the re-marriage I was suddenly one of six kids. My poor grades and slow reading ability led to increased depression over school. The divorce left me shattered as a little boy something I learned of only as an adult. The whole while I won prizes for art at the Florida State Fair, sold pieces to friends, and landed works in school literature magazines. So began this duality that so many of us know of being a failure in one world and a rock star in another.

Things got worse at home and I spent some time as a runaway. During that time I could spend hours drawing if I wanted to painting when I could afford it. People wanted my artwork to hang it up, and display it, it seemed too easy in a way though I was putting in enormous amounts of time.

Formal Training and Studies

Reconciling things at home I somehow made it to a community art college in Tampa Florida. I took general classes not sure I would keep it up or could afford it. Nearly quitting to take some dead end job get an apartment who knows what, I took a drawing course as an elective. After the first critique I was pulled aside by Steve Holms my professor at the time. He sat with me I figured I had done something wrong was in trouble for something. He asked to see the other drawings in my pad from the class. Looking them over he asked, “Do you want to study art?” “Do you have enough money for school?” I was taken aback I wanted to study music (tried actually but again I can’t read quickly and memorized music pieces by ear this worked for while until my first theory test) and no I didn’t have any money. It didn’t occur to me at the time to spend loan money on a degree that might actually lead to a job, I hadn’t really expected to make it through more than a few semesters. I was given a full ride at the school money for any and all art classes that I wanted to take and a little for supplies (too little it turned out).

I took every class that I could and even a few that were created for me. The final project was a series of bronze pours with another mentor and hero of mine Jerry Meatyard (yes brother of Ralph Eugene). Jerry and Steve possessed an energy and reverence for art and art history that has stayed with me decades later.

The Vagabond Days

After a brief attempt at the University of South Florida, I traveled a bit in England, Italy, Spain, Morocco, Portugal, Puerto Rico, and France and moved to Colorado. I was pulled into the working world and grew to love all things culinary, learning to be a cook of serious skill and knowledge. At every turn I was called, “Professor Jonathan and Doctor so and so,” my time in college worlds away from the ex-con, wife beater, alcoholic and drug abusive, world of hotels and restaurants. Everyone from the general manager on down seemed to say, “you don’t belong here.” Everyone seemed to think I should be teaching, that I was a natural professor.

A Couple of Degrees

I continued to paint exhibit art anywhere I could, and after a show at a winery in Colorado returned to college. The University of Colorado had a leper colony of ramshackle buildings beyond the farthest reaches of the university, on the other side of a coyote filled butte, dedicated to studio art. The late Jerry Riggs ran the campus gallery and the late Louis Ciccotello ran the fine art program. There were amazing minds in the art history department and dedicated Chicago University of Art studio instructors. I thrived in the penniless environment earning a BS in Fine Art Studies. Exhibiting in Denver and eventually Santa Fe I continued to sell and show works.

While completing my last two semesters I found a work study job at the Colorado Springs city museum beginning my museum resume. During this time I visited Thailand, Korea and Cambodia and my worldview shifted radically. Hired on after finishing the degree I found myself a museum worker general. Working with for the first time Native American ethnographic and archaeological collections I decided to take an archaeological field school near Mesa Verde. At the Colorado Springs museum I had my first educational experience presenting a program for kids on archaeology I had created based on my experiences in the field and focused on Four Corners region archaeology.

Hired on by the museum of New Mexico I began working as an archaeologist in Santa Fe. Returning to Colorado I completed a second BS in Physical Anthropology, and continued to take contract archaeology and museum jobs.

Through the museum experience I learned of conservation and restoration and thought I might study it. Moving to Florence Italy for a year I took part in a gruelling program of art history, museum studies, and practical art restoration. Learning to stabilize and restore canvas paintings, frescoes, gilded works, and works of wood, mixed with numerous cathedral and museum visits, it was an outrageous jewel in my over all art education. How many painful moments of faded worn slides had I endured through the years versus, “today class we will talk about Michelangelo lets go see the David.”

I married my Swiss girlfriend of several years in Switzerland and returned to the states with her.

At the Western Museum of Mining and Industry I joined the museum’s education department. Creating, presenting and researching museum programs was exciting and fulfilling. I found my ability as an artist being used for the first time in a professional setting. I finally decided I could be an educator.

Five Years as an Artist

My wife found life in America frustrating and suffered from some homesickness. We moved to eastern Switzerland where I began to exhibit art and work for two art museums in the region. The experience of handling Rodin, Giacometti, and Arp was earth shattering, and I couldn’t help but feel the culmination of a long and winding road of art experience. I created educational materials for both museums some of which are still in use a decade later.

My art resume grew by leaps in bounds while in Switzerland. My wife and I founded a production company which we named Sanchez Art Werk. With business, cards, a website, brochures, calendars and posters, we went into the business of art. Eventual showing art in four different countries, through something like fifty exhibits I produced and sold more art in five years then I had in the total thirty that proceeded.

I added numerous countries to my list of places visited made extensive trips into Italy, Germany, France, and Austria. But also further afield into the Czech Republic, Belgium, Serbia, Croatia, Colombia, Macedonia, England, Greece, and Slovenia.

The MIM Years

Again returning to the states I began work again as a field archaeologist. I took what was to be a six to nine month contract for intense museum work at the forming Musical Instrument Museum, Phoenix. The retired Target founder was moving into a new role as philanthropist and throwing together a museum, museum collection, and museum staff as a new museum building was being built. I entered this mad cauldron and joined the rush to open a museum. While working with the collection primarily in the early days the education department was still forming. I presented the idea of creating a museum program on the blues and was thrown into the mix immediately. Museum Encounters are in house live presentations part lecture, part hands on and part performance in nature. My program was a hit with the founder of the museum himself, and I was promoted to the three hundred seat house theater where I continue to present my program.Museum EcounterSlides and mojo

Recent Events

Briefly my wife and I had a gallery in Scottsdale, I did a show in Tampa (at my old college in honor of some of the mentors mentioned above) and another in Denver, have created numerous short films and two CDs but the pace of art production has come to slow stroll. Having worked for several education departments I decided to pursue a degree in education, and have spent about a year in a mostly online program through the University of Florida.

My most recent art endeavor is the Artificial Curiosities show at the Vault Gallery on the downtown ASU campus in Phoenix. After years of international and Swiss shows the exhibit is the first to feature my wife and I together.

We continue to run our production company, study, show, and produce art and music, here in Phoenix our home of three years.

Jonathan Sanchez 2014

PS

Created for an art education course it is as always way way over the Tweet size word limit (my most frustrating challenge in any of the grad courses) so it is presented here in its entirety and will be mangled and drastically shortened for the demands of the course. I have had a ridiculous life in art to limit that to 800 words is equally ridiculous.

Wellspring of Nature

Wellspring of Nature (thoughts on working from nature, copying famous works, and the pluses and minuses for art students. Created for the UF Art Education program)

Knife Edge Two Piece 1962-65 a colossal bronze work by the great artist Henry Moore, according to the artist was based on a tiny bird bone he discovered. Similarly it is said that he liked to walk along a beach discover fragments of shells and eroded stones, collect them and use them as the basis of his sometimes two story massive works. That nature was an inspiration for Moore’s fantastic works though well documented can sometimes be lost in the final work or at least obscured. The final process of arranging the work for public viewing, which plays upon the negative space created and the thoughtful use of patina, are both part of larger process of or evolution from tiny seashell to monumental work.

Nature as Point of Departure

I present this example as part of a larger discussion on the benefits and pitfalls of working from nature, and copying established works. Clearly nature can be a point of departure a starting point that leads the artist or art student down numerous and various paths, the final result being something radically or unrecognizable different from the original inspiration. That wandering through a natural environment can inspire or change the state of an artist aside, the forms of nature offer endless amounts of inspiration.

Forms Exist in Reality

Light and shadow, atmospheric perspective, volume, density and texture are how we perceive our world visually. The tactile clues that textures give us, used in art add a dimension that invite and fire the imagination and senses. Depth through hot and cold colors, clear and sharp forms allows for us to read 2-d space as 3-d. Shadows and shading give weight to objects dramatic lighting. Working from reality introduces the student to the visual rules of light, color, and form and lends the ability to use these rules to visually communicate.

Established Works

The benefits of copying and working from established works are two fold, allowing students to learn technique through discovery versus pedantic lessons, and introducing a part of art history through a work. Allowing students to research and seek out an artist they connect to on some level insures their personal investment and interest. As a student learns more of a particular artist and then tries to copy their work a new respect for the life story and techniques of an artist can be found.

A pitfall to this approach can be that it might be difficult for someone too accustomed to copying works to find their own voice or style. Working from famous or established works even the obscure works of other artist should therefore be limited and a personal touch should be suggested or encouraged. How can a student for example work in the style of Dubuffet but add their personal time period, experiences or contemporary voice to the work? Using the experimental textual techniques of Max Ernst for example are a nod to the artist without direct copying students can both learn of the artist and use the techniques on their own.

The Danger of Appropriation

As an exhibiting artist I have been at too many group shows with artist that, “paint just like so and so,” and still call the work their own.  Prolonged copying can produce plagurist artists that never find their own style or voice.

Changing Gears

An argument against working from nature would be that someone might have the potential to thrive in abstraction but through the confines of still life, landscape, or other forms of representation, never find themselves able to break out or change gears. Abstraction is a creative leap that many artist will never make, is this a result of too strictly working from reality? Exercises that focus on texture, color, and composition void of representation do not put subject in the way of visual communication or expression or hinder the exploration of abstraction.

I had a very traditional training working from still life, landscape and the nude, and through that process learned the rules of light and form, warm colors and cold and hopefully though an abstract artist still produce work that rings true because of it.

In closing

There are many benefits from working from reality and some from copying established, classic, or famous works. Nature in general as a source of inspiration is limitless, subject to interpretation, and can still result in works of complex imagination and vision. Focusing on the abstract elements of texture composition, pure form, and line without a subject emphasis can still lead to an understanding of the rules of light and shadow, form and volume, depth and perspective, without the baggage of representation. In the end perhaps the best approach is a balance that does not emphasize any one approach but stresses that all can used for self expression.

References

http://www.henry-moore.org/pg