Just after returning from the DR, I had a day or so to wander the streets of New York. Wanting to check out the Bauhaus Exhibition at the MoMA, I called my city-dwelling brother (one of three brothers total, and a sister) and we headed uptown.

These are my feet on the escalator to the sixth floor. Exciting.

My brother’s feet. He’s classy.

If you’re me, you didn’t exactly know what Bauhaus was besides a typeface and a pretty sign you saw somewhere once in Connecticut…up until last week. Embarrassing. (Also, it’s pronounced Bow-howse.) Turns out to be a really interesting movement.

The Bauhaus was a school founded in Weimar, Germany in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius upon the concept of bringing all of the arts together. The idea was to bring together craft and industry, to create functional and beautiful and beautifully made objects. As with the Modernism movement, technology is seen as a positive and utilitarian element in art, according to the Bauhaus doctrine. (It should be noted here that the Bauhaus movement seems largely formal, meaning concerned with form. Meaning that materials, shapes and compositions were rigorously explored, whereas the development of concepts seems to have been secondary, if at all considered.)

A diagram of the Basics Curriculum. (Source: DesignHistory.org.)

Although the school only lasted for fourteen years and was constantly undergoing major transitions in personnel and locations (the exhibition is broken down into years/locations), the work developed at the school became a profound art movement, greatly influencing the Modernist movement, which was about forty years underway at the time of the school’s establishment.

Color analysis of a Madonna painting, Paul Citroen, c. 1921.

One thing I really enjoyed about the show, which did not allow photographs, was seeing the assignments of students like Josef Albers and Wassily Kandinsky. Even though as students their work demonstrates a kind of precision and focus, it is a reminder that we all have roots somewhere. Kandinsky and everyone else developed their craft as creative problem-solvers over time.

Some lovely postcards designed in the Bauhaus. Forgive the blurriness; camera was being used in stealth mode.

There’s something beautiful in Gropius’ Bauhaus Manifesto, in the concept of the workshop environment. Building is so fundamental to the human body, and so basic to our knowledge. What better way to connect with something (materials, others, ideas) than to make a tangible object? I like this.

Last fall, I began my illustration class by having the students make their own sketchbooks (a lesson plan lifted from one of my own teachers). We spent a couple of hours folding paper, sewing and finally trimming our books. At the end of class, several students came up to me and said they had no idea they could make their own books. I had no idea I could make my own books either, until I tried out of frustration one day. But what a beautiful exercise, empowering students to build a piece of their own world; to make something using their own hands.

Check out MoMA’s pretty if art-lacking Bauhaus Website for more information about the show, running until January 25.