Bauhaus Construct: Fashioning Identity, Discourse and Modernism

by Jeffrey Saletnik (Editor), Robin Schuldenfrei (Editor)

Overview

Reconsidering the status and meaning of Bauhaus objects in relation to the multiple re-tellings of the school’s history, this volume positions art objects of the Bauhaus within the theoretical, artistic, historical, and cultural concerns in which they were produced and received.

Contributions from leading scholars writing in the field today – including Frederic J. Schwartz, Magdalena Droste, and Alina Payne – offer an entirely new treatment of the Bauhaus. Issues such as art and design pedagogy, the practice of photography, copyright law, and critical theory are discussed. Through a strong thematic structure, new archival research and innovative methodologies, the questions and subsequent conclusions presented here re-examine the history of the Bauhaus and its continuing legacy. Essential reading for anyone studying the Bauhaus, modern art and design.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415778367
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/17/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Jeffrey Saletnik is Lecturer and Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Art History and Archeology at Columbia University. Recently he was a fellow of the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin.

Robin Schuldenfrei is Junior Professor of Art History at Humboldt University, Berlin and Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors vii

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction Jeffrey Saletnik Robin Schuldenfrei 1

Part 1 Agents 11

1 The Bauhaus Manifesto Postwar to Postwar: From the Street to the Wall to the Radio to the Memoir Karen Koehler 13

2 The Irreproducibility of the Bauhaus Object Robin Schuldenfrei 37

3 The Disappearing Bauhaus: Architecture and its Public in the Early Federal Republic Frederic J. Schwartz 61

4 Pedagogic Objects: Josef Albers, Greenbergian Modernism, and the Bauhaus in America Jeffrey Saletnik 83

Part 2 Transference 103

5 A Refuge for Script: Paul Klee's "Square Pictures" Annie Bourneuf 105

6 Lyonel Feininger's Bauhaus Photographs Laura Muir 125

7 Excavating Surface: On the Repair and Revision of László Moholy-Nagy's Z VII (1926) Joyce Tsai 142

8 Picturing Sculpture: Object, Image and Archive Paul Paret 163

Part 3 Object Identity 181

9 Designing Men: New Visions of Masculinity in the Photomontages of Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, and László Moholy-Nagy Elizabeth Otto 183

10 The Bauhaus Object between Authorship and Anonymity Magdalena Droste 205

11 The Identity of Design as Intellectual Property T'ai Smith 226

Coda 245

Bauhaus Endgame: Ambiguity, Anxiety, and Discomfort Alina Payne 247

Illustration Credits 267

Index 271