This one-room FREE display at Tate Britain celebrated the centenary of the opening of the Bauhaus School of Art and Design in Germany in 1919 with a display showing the interaction between Bauhaus ideas and exponents, and their followers and collaborators in Britain.
The Bauhaus aimed to promote modern art for a modern world and to demonstrate the practical use of all the arts to improve society. As part of this goal it set out to integrate disciplines including the fine arts, architecture, craft, graphic design and photography.
During its 14 year existence an astonishing array of some of the most creative 20th century artists, sculptors, designers, architects and photographers lived and taught and made wonderful things at the school’s Weimar campus.
K VII (1922) by László Moholy-Nagy. Tate
As soon as they came to power in 1933 the Nazis, who not incorrectly saw the Bauhaus as a hotbed of radicalism, shut it down. Many artists associated with the school came to Britain in search of safety and work and British artists with similar interests to those of the Bauhaus welcomed their émigré colleagues. Many key Bauhaus figures went on to the United States, opening the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937, but some remained in Britain, and this exhibition focuses on a) those who stayed b) the British periods of those who stayed for a year or two before moving on.
Ball, Plane and Hole (1936) by Dame Barbara Hepworth
So it is that the exhibition interleaved works produced by both Bauhaus and British artists and designers across a characteristically wide range of media. I counted:
Paintings by Ben Nicholson, László Moholy-Nagy, John Stephenson, Alastair Morton artistic director of Edinburgh Weavers who commissioned work from Nicholson.
Watercolours by Grete Marks.
Sculptures by Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo, who settled permanently in London and became a leading figure in the development of abstract art in Britain.
Atea service by Grete Marks and a teapot by Naum Slutzky.
Ceramics such as the vase by Grete Marks.
Carpets by Ben Nicholson.
Fabrics by Ben Nicholson.
Furniture i.e. streamlined modern chairs by Marcel Breuer.
A bakelite radio set designed by Wells Coates.
Photos of modernist blocks of flats (Kensal House, Kensal Rise) by Edith Tudor-Hart, and portraits by Lucia Moholy-Nagy.
Architecture Kensal House designed by Elizabeth Denby with architect Maxwell Fry, who had been English partner to Bauhaus director Walter Gropius during his sojourn in England 1934 to 1937.
A selection of jewellery, namely brooches, necklaces and rings – by goldsmith, industrial designer and master craftsman Naum Slutzky.
Dove brooch by Naum Slutzky
And books. There are several display cases showing old magazines from the 1930s by such earnest advocates of modernism as Sir Herbert Read, the dustjacket of whose 1934 book Art and Industry was designed by Bauhaus-trained Herbert Bayer. Read went on to try and create an inter-disciplinary art & design college in Edinburgh.
There’s a rare copy of The New Architecture and The Bauhaus by the Bauhaus’s founding director, Walter Gropius, published in 1937, one of the first books about the school in English. And of the 1939 Pelican Special A Hundred Years of Photography by Lucia Moholy-Nagy, László’s photographer wife.
Another display case shows magazine articles written by some of these artists, alongside personal photos of, for example, the Nicholsons at home, and postcards from Moholy-Nagy to the Nicholsons.
Ben Nicholson always features prominently in these exhibitions as one of the 1930s British artists who experimented most extensively with abstract and geometric shapes, in both painting and small sculptures and (as here) a carpet and fabrics.
I don’t quite know why, but he’s never lit my candle at all – I’ve always thought of him as a poor British cousin of the far more exciting and innovative Europeans. Here’s a typical piece of Nicholsonia. Its heart’s in the right place but… for some reason it leaves me cold…
Sculpture (c.1936) by Ben Nicholson. Tate
Nicholson lived in North London with his partner Barbara Hepworth (whose work I’ve always found much more interesting). They befriended their art historian neighbour Read among other arty types, and a number of the Bauhaus exiles settled in North London near them, forming quite an artistic colony, including exiles like Bauhaus-trained Marcel Breuer who designed book covers, tables and chairs, some of which are in the exhibition.
B9 table by Marcel Breuer (1927)
The exhibition even includes an entertaining film – Lobsters! It was co-directed by Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy, who was commissioned to work on the film with English director John Mathias. While in Britain Moholy-Nagy took on short-term roles in photography, film and commercial design. He designed ads for London Transport and collaborated on this short film depicting fishermen on the Sussex coast. The surprising angles and close-ups are attributed to Moholy-Nagy’s Bauhaus sensibility but I personally was more struck by the plummy tones of the commentary and the jolly score by Arthur Benjamin.
After a while I noticed that almost all the objects on display are owned by Tate, and it occurred to the cynic in me that the Bauhaus centenary was probably an opportunity for the gallery to dust off some of these rather dowdy antiques and given them an airing.
I’m not criticising. The insight just helped to explain why most of the exhibits were only so-so, or included sort-of interesting postcards and magazines, but lacked any real killer exhibits.
That said, not choosing to go to town on the centenary but limiting the celebration to a modest and FREE display made it in some ways feel much more relaxed and casual and accessible than it might have been.
Related links
- The Bauhaus and Britain was on at Tate Modern until 17 November 2019
Other Weimar Germany-related reviews
Art and culture
- Magic Realism Art in Weimar Germany: 1919 to 1933 @ Tate Modern (April 2019)
- Anni Albers @ Tate Modern (December 2018)
- Aftermath: Art in the wake of World War One @ Tate Britain (September 2018)
- Bauhaus: Art as Life @ the Barbican (July 2012)
- The New Objectivity: Modern German Art in the Weimar Republic 1918 to 1933 edited by Stephanie Barron and Sabine Eckmann (2015)
- The New Objectivity, some notes
- From Weimar to Wall Street 1918-1929 (1993)
- The Weimar Years: A Culture Cut Short by John Willett (1984)
- Bauhaus by Frank Whitford (1984)
- The New Sobriety: Art and Politics in the Weimar Period 1917 to 1933 by John Willett (1978)
- Weimar: A Cultural History 1918 to 1933 by Walter Laqueur (1974)
- Weimar Culture by Peter Gay (1968)
- A Small Yes and a Big No by George Grosz (1946)
History
- The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End 1917 to 1923 by Robert Gerwarth (2016)
- Ring of Steel by Alexander Watson (2014) A synopsis
- Bismarck: The Iron Chancellor by Volker Ullrich (2008)
- The Eastern Front 1914 to 1918: The Suicide of Empires by Alan Clark (1971)
Books & Boots 