Bauhaus Exhibit in MoMA

The Bauhaus exhibit in the MoMA is very engaging and thought provoking. While the works of art are great as stand alone pieces without any explanations they become a lot more awe-inspiring when put into their context. The context being the time period the works of art were made in. To say that the Bauhaus movement was ahead of its time would be an understatement. If we were to compare this exhibition to other artworks of the time it would be like comparing the submachine gun to a revolver. It doesn't just represent humanities shift to the modern era, it lays the groundwork for it. In fact, to my surprise a lot of the art pieces were basically the same as the art we produce today. This either says little about the progress we made since the 1920's or represents the groundbreaking revolution the movement accomplished. I believe the latter to be true.

The furniture pieces in the exhibit look like extra comfortable versions of the cheap stylistic rip-offs we buy today. Ironically, manufacturers missed the point of the style completely. The Bauhaus was less concerned with style and more with practicality. That isn’t to say that style wasn’t important, on the contrary, but the style was a result of comfort. The chairs they made were built for sitting down; the simplicity was a rebellion against the gimmicky styles that plagued the time period. Now it seems we are back to gimmicky styles without the comfort. This is probably where Morris influenced the Bauhaus movement most. In his quest to make perfect books he stumbled upon the field of design. Although humans have constantly designed their environment it was never a conscious process but something instinctual. (Like a beaver building a dam.) Morris was very specific about his works however; to him it was as if beauty was a science and everything had a reason for existence. If he didn’t invent design he definitely started to bridge the gap between our emotional sense of art and intellectual sense of art and then the Bauhaus movement finished it. Morris’s unrelenting desire to create comfortable visually pleasing books can be felt through-out most of the exhibit.

Although not all works at the exhibit were about logic and practically. Some of them simply explored the unknown. One thing is certain, traditional concepts about what art is supposed to represent were tossed out the window. There is an overwhelming sense of freedom that art before it simply doesn’t have, and for the first time the concept of less is more can be seen. As opposed to the renaissance artists who would try to fit in as many things as possible into every square inch the exhibit displayed art pieces that were not afraid of being bare. They played with the empty space and created geometrical compositions with stark contrasts. Some pieces did the opposite and convoluted the design with interweaving geometric shapes to create chaos. What is beautiful about the chaotic pieces is that all of them found harmony in the overall result. The chaos could only be seen up close; from far away they melted into coherent compositionally pleasing images. And this seems to be the hallmark of almost any Bauhaus work of art – the intentionality of the design element.