How to Invent "Modern".

Take one full glass of Walter Gropius, mix with a few years of war and shake until discharged. Whala! The Bauhaus is founded with a lot of brilliance, tons of talent and copious amounts of public funding. Maybe copious is not the correct word here.

The Bauhaus was straight from the brain of Mr. Gropius and founded on the ideals of avante-garde design, simple, elegant and aesthetically pleasing. The thing that I think is really the coolest about the Bauhaus is that the modern day art studios, and the way we are taught art now came straight from the Bauhaus. Before 1913 art was predominantly a self-taught, solitary thing to do. I also equated the things that happened at the Bauhaus as Germany's version of an "Art's & Crafts Movement". Theirs was way cooler, way hippier and we use way more from it. Thus defining them as "cooler".

In the early days of the Bauhaus we see the use of studios and lessons taught by a Master Craftsman in common use work shops. The focus on a Foundation Course where students studied emotions and feelings that went into their art. An emphasis on understanding the machine so as to be able to manipulate it to do and to make the things that you wanted to make. Nothing was impossible at the Bauhaus and there were no limitations (Until the Nazi guy took over. Then he had some limitations, but they eventually kicked him out.) - nothing was taboo. Well, except maybe the students behavior.

It was exactly that that got them run out of the town of Weimar - they plumb wore out their welcome with their long hair and girls wearing trousers **Oh the HORROR!**. They then moved to Dessau and because of the war eventually the school closed again for a short period of time. The Crystalline palace was built in Berlin and was a remarkable building. Built just like it sounds was based on all of the simple aesthetically pleasing ideals that came out of the Bauhaus.

The idea of art wasn't clearly defined at the Bauhaus. The worked to erase the lines definitively defining art as painting, sculptural, textile and so on. Theater was also a huge part of life at the Bauhaus. Very strange, I mean modern theater productions. Hey! You thought it, I just said it. I appreciate it but it was very different.

1933 the Bauhaus was closed for good with some of its students being hauled away for their ideals. Closed for good because in Germany it was not a good thing to be a free thinker. It is really interesting that the history of the Bauhaus really does parallel the political turmoil the country was in at the time. It is actually really sad. The Buhaus lead art into the 20th century and I can only imagine where we'd be now if it was still in existence.