Founded by Walter Gropius in 1919, the Bauhaus was a German art school that initiated the combination of art and crafts innovatively to produce goods for everyday use, which influenced and shaped modern life. The Bauhaus value is still effective today since we can still see the impact of the Bauhaus. For example, contemporary furniture are mostly minimalist, which is one of the values from the Bauhaus. This essay will discuss the failure of the Bauhaus in achieving its mass-produce ideal through examining three Bauhaus production, the Wassily Chair, the chess set and Model No. MT49 tea infuser. Through the aspects of artistry and utility, the Bauhaus pursued to generate reasonably priced mass-production by taking the forms and materials into …show more content…
considerations. In spite of its aspiration, the Bauhaus production tended to artworks that did not really suit the real demands of functional design. Moreover, the Bauhaus production was expensive due to costly materials and finely-crafted requirements therefore they were not mass-manufactured. These factors caused the potential buyers to be mostly elite or wealthy. The Bauhaus failed in merging art with mass-production and it was limited to designing for an elite. The Bauhaus desired to combine art and crafts to design readily accessible mass-production to the general public. As the Bauhaus was founded after WW1, it was believed that well designed household goods for the general public at affordable prices would build a better world. To achieve this social aim, Walter Gropius strove to deal with the distinction and contradiction between fine art and crafts, which he refers to “culture and civilisation”. He believed the harmony among fine art and crafts would be “the crystalline symbol of a new and coming faith”. In order to facilitate the collaboration between artists and craftsmen, fine art training and crafts training were required as part of the foundation course of the Bauhaus. Students of the Bauhaus were taught by two teachers, a fine art teacher (form master) and a technical training teacher (craft master). Through the comprehensive education from two masters, students tried to balance the artistic and technical aspects to unify art and crafts while making design decisions. They had to consider the challenges and conditions of manufacture in the factorial environment. They were also encouraged to study different fields to explore different industrial materials, methods and techniques to fabricate universally accessible everyday goods for mass-production. The Bauhaus generated artistic and practical goods, which challenged and broke the traditional concept of fine art. The Bauhaus Production was designed to solve problem instead of being good-looking creation only. Design became no longer aesthetic only, but also practical and economical. In order to generate inexpensive mass-production, the Bauhaus advanced two philosophical concepts, “form follows function” and “less is more”. The Bauhaus production focused more on its utility rather than adornment, which was innovative, while ornament and decoration were widely used in Art Nouveau. Which means, forms were dictated by functionality as it was the first priority. By eliminating and reducing unnecessary decorative elements, objects in purer and simplified forms were more suitable for mass-production. The Bauhaus focused more heavily on the basic geometric shapes and forms, such as circles, squares and triangles because they could be easier to be produced in the manufacturing process. The production of the Bauhaus workshop was minimally made of a few basic elements, therefore they could be more readily industrially manufactured. In other words, the Bauhaus production focused on simplicity to construct the design in a very clear and simple structure with no added historical styling ornament. As a result, the forms of the Bauhaus production heightened the functionality thus became more accessible as industrial design. Through the considerations of forms and materials, the Bauhaus pursued to provide artistic and practical goods at reasonable prices in the purpose of mass-production. However, the Bauhaus did not reach its ideals since the Bauhaus production did not generate the utility effectively. As a matter of fact, the Bauhaus production was inclined to be artwork. Generally speaking, design must be functional because design without functionality will be defined as fine art. Also known as the Wassily Chair, Model B3 chair designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925 , was an iconic Bauhaus production that could demonstrate this idea. The initial intention of a chair is to provide a comfortable seat for people to sit, nevertheless the Wassily Chair did not serve this primary utility effectively. The Wassily Chair was a revolutionary and innovation of furniture design. Broke the stereotype of four-legged chair, steel tubes and leather were used. In the design process, the Wassily Chair focused on purity, simplicity and minimalism. The frame and structure of the Wassily Chair was very clear. Since the chair was exposed and see through, people might feel awkward, floating and precarious when sitting on it. Werner Moller, a Bauhaus Expert, commented that the Wassily Chair gave people an impression of “exposed”, “almost naked”, and “unprotected”. Teva Bjerken, a faculty member at the New School for Drama, analysed that the Wassily Chair was not a “supportive chair” since people could hardly sit on it for longer than five minutes. The slope of the seat forced people to slide back then have a deep seat uncomfortably. The Wassily Chair was not as comfortable and resilient as normal armchairs. It was not a relaxation or enjoyment, but a pain to sit on the Wassily Chair. This raised the concerns that whether the Bauhaus honestly attained the functionality of industrial design or not. Although the Bauhaus followed the philosophical principles of “less is more” to provide minimalistic design, the design did not follow the “forms follow function” feature. Even though the chair was good-looking, once it did not serve the functionality effectively, it lost its significance. This is because functionality is always the basic feature in design. In fact, the prototype of the Wassily Chair was displayed in an exhibition in Dessau. This indicated that rather than a furniture that was suitable to sit, the Wassily Chair was actually an artwork to be admired and appreciated. As the Wassily Chair was depicted as an artwork, the consumers were mainly art exhibition, gallery, educated elite or wealthy because they were able to understand the innovative forms and ideas of that work. For ordinary people, the Wassily Chair was too innovative to be a furniture. The Wassily Chair was perceived as an art object for the elite. This implied that the Bauhaus failed to contain the characteristics of the Bauhaus principles and provide functional common household objects for the general public. The results of the Bauhaus production were not as success as they supposed to be since the Bauhaus production did not fit the real practical demands of practical design. Besides, there were some economic problems when fabricating goods.
The Bauhaus production was at the high price, in this way, only the elite could afford. Walter Gropius agreed that the Bauhaus production was not affordable for the general public, for the purpose of dealing with pressure of the school’s financial problem and the cost of picking up material. While the average income of a working-class and white-collar family was around 64-91 Marks per week in 1927, the Wassily Chair costed 60 Marks, and a five-piece tea service costed 180 Marks. This data shows how expensive the Bauhaus production was. The intended audience felt alienated and disconnected because of the price. The actual consumers could afford the Bauhaus production were elite or upper middle class. It was impossible that the Bauhaus production to be perceived as inexpensive common household objects by the masses. The Bauhaus created prototypes that intended to be industrially manufactured, yet they were not applied to the industry to meet this intention. The Bauhaus explored the possibility of new material. Rare and quality material that did not previously used, such as ebony, ivory and bronze, had been employed in the 1920s. The finely-crafted requirements were also the factor that raised the cost of the Bauhaus production. The Bauhaus production was crafts-based quantitatively. They required exacting handwork and crafted skills from the talented craftsmen. The pre-industrial methods such as woodworking, weaving, and bookmaking, relied on craftsmanship in good quality. In 1924, created by a master of the Bauhaus wood workshop, Josef Hartwig, the Bauhaus chess set was made from solid pear wood, cardboard and paper. The use of costly material made the chess set expensive as pearwood was a high quality wood in Europe. Also, the chess set was hand finished in a limited amount, this caused the high purchase price. Designed by Marianne Brandt in 1924, made from silver and ebony, the Model No. MT49 tea
infuser was a contradiction to the Bauhaus value. One of the prototypes was finally sold to an American museum at a record-breaking price in 2007. The materials increased the cost of the tea infuser. Silver and ebony were luxury materials at that time so they could not be mass-produced cheaply. On the other hand, although the tea infuser seemed simple by it geometric forms, it actually relied on a large amount of time and handcraft by the trained silversmith. The precisely joined body, spout and base required “exacting handcraftsmanship”. Alberto Alessi, head of a design factory, commented that it was difficult to trade the tea infuser at a reasonable charge, because it was complicated to solve the technical problems during the production process. Since the tea infuser was handmade in the workshop in small batches, and difficult to be fabricated in the factory, the scarcity and precision explained its high price. Although the Bauhaus suggested to make factory goods for ordinary people, the materials and methods they applied were not appropriate and suitable for machine production, which made the Bauhaus production unaffordable to its intended target audience. The Bauhaus chased the mergence of art and crafts, get rid of unnecessary decoration, focused on the utility of the production, in order to generate artistic and practical goods at affordable price for the masses. However, the Bauhaus failed in achieving this social aim. There was paradox between the ideal and the actual Bauhaus production. Most of the Bauhaus production did not reaching the stage of widely fabricated production. The Bauhaus production did not respond to the Bauhaus features in forms, materials and price. The forms of the Bauhaus production did not effectively reflect the expectations of the functional objects. In some extent, the Bauhaus production became artworks. The premium materials and complicated techniques of the Bauhaus production seemed incongruous with the mass-production ideal. As a result, regarded as a form of luxury, the Bauhaus production was only accessible for elite as they could understand the beauty of the work and afford the cost. The Bauhaus did not successfully achieve its ideal of mass-production.
Marcel Breuer, born in the early 1900’s in Hungary, was one of the first and youngest students to learn under the Bauhaus style, taught by Walter Gropius. Breuer started his career designing furniture, using tubular, or “handle bar like”, steel (Dodd, Mead, and Company 32). One of the most popular of these furniture designs was his Club Chair B3designed in 1922. In the 1930’s, Breuer moved to the United States to teach and practice architecture. In the 1950’s, he received the Medal of Honor from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Between 1960 and 1980, Breuer was honored with several honorary doctoral degrees from several universities around the world. After retiring in 1976 due to poor health, Breuer was awarded several other awards, and his work was displayed in exhibitions around the world. Breuer died on July 2nd, 1981, at the age of 79 (Marcel Breuer Associates 6).
Benjamin, Walter, and J. A. Underwood. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.
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- Freedom in esthetic and design - Determination of the production costs before the execution of work