The Bauhaus Movement Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

The Bauhaus Movement - Essay Example But in 1945 when the World War II had ended, a pattern of thinking particularly in arts and architecture began to emerge. This was known as the Bauhaus movement. The presence of eminent personalities from arts and architecture like Joseph Albers, Gropius and Mies who supported the movement was an evidence of the movement gaining acceptance by the people at that time. Every movement in history has gone through phases of controversies and criticisms. The Bauhaus movement too, was no such exception. There were obstructions as well as political interferences. But still the Bauhaus movement was successful in providing a direction to a newly incepted art form which was known as the abstract art (Craig, 2001). The Bauhaus movement laid the foundation stone for the art and architecture that was to be used throughout the 20th century The Bauhaus movement- inception During the initial decades of the twentieth century many chaos and destructions were seen. While at the political level socialism and democracy uprooted monarchy, at the scientific level machines and new technology brought in many changes. It was at this time that visual art fused with new ideas and creation emerged. This growing pattern manifested itself in the form of Expressionism (Ryan and Conver, 2003, pp.49-50). In Expressionism form of art, the person or the objects in context were removed using strong contour lines or bold colors. Around 1907, cubism emerged. Cubism was of two forms – analytical cubism that derived abstracts from living objects and synthetic cubism, which was more metaphorical of the two, emphasized on representing the essence of the object only. Cubism form of art led to the occurrence of several other art movements like the Dadaism, Futurism and the Bauhaus (Arntson, n.d, p.24). The background The name Bauhaus movement was coined from the name Bauhaus that was a German school of crafts and fine arts in Germany during 1919-1933. It was founded by the Walter Gropius who was a G erman architect in 1919. Post World War II, a movement known as the Bauhaus’s movement began that aimed at the liberation and exploration of American art and artists. Prior to that, much of the focus laid on the European form of art with little scope for their American counterparts The European artists were restricted in their expression of art and architecture. Bauhaus movement uprooted these restrictions and offered new arenas for them to explore. But still in its effort to bring in modernism and incorporate new ideas in its art and architecture it faced severe criticisms from both the public as well as the ruling government in those times. The Bauhaus movement occurred in two stages. It made its appearance during 1919-1936 and gained momentum during its second phase (Craig, 2001, p.112). The initial stage laid the foundation for the acceptance of new ideas .This was implicit from the fact that people from the Bauhaus School of Arts were brought in the country to teach and express their ideas. The second phase saw marked improvement over the first phase in the form of establishment of the renowned artist Joseph Albers at the Black Mountain College in North California and its acceptance of the Bauhaus ideology by the German artist Gropius and German American architect Mies (Craig, 2001, pp.35). The influence of de Stijl on the Bauhaus movement The de Stijl was a Dutch artistic movement that occurred in Netherlands. The Guggenheim museum’s article on the de Stijl stated that the de Stijl form of art focused on the usage of geometrical figures like the straight line, the square, the rectangle in asymmetrical combinations and using pure primary colors with black and white (Ryan and Conver, 2003, p.52). The Bauhaus move