bauhaus imaginista
A School in the World
Edited by Marion von Osten and Grant Watson
Thames & Hudson, 2019
320 pages, bound
200 illustrations
ISBN 978-0-500-021934
Price: 48 €
Available at Haus der Kulturen der Welt and at bookstores, mail order buying / postal shopping via the Publisher
bauhaus imaginista. A School in the World traces the history of the international impact and reception of the Bauhaus’s practices and teachings against the backdrop of major geopolitical transitions of the 20th century. It focuses on the mutual dialog and exchange of the Bauhaus, its students and teachers with non-European modernists in places like India, Japan, China, Russia, Brazil and the United States. Following the four large-scale exhibition and project chapters Corresponding With, Learning From, Moving Away and Still Undead and based on a multi-year research project, the volume sweepingly examines the reception history of the Bauhaus and its global impact, which still continues today.
With contributions by Kader Attia, Elissa Auther, Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan, Regina Bittner, Gavin Butt, Helena Čapková, Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley, Anshuman Dasgupta, Magdalena Droste, Zvi Efrat, Fabienne Eggelhöfer, Elvira Espejo, Thomas Flierl, Bené Fonteles, Luca Frei, Hilde Heynen, Christian Hiller, Tom Holert, Yoshimasa Kaneko, Ailton Krenak, Eduard Kögel, Susanne Leeb, Mohamed Melehi, Partha Mitter, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Marion von Osten, The Otholith Group, Adrian Rifkin, Daniel Talesnik, Paulo Tavares, Virginia Gardner Troy, Hiromitsu Umemiya, Melissa Venator, Grant Watson and Zoe Zhang.
Table of contents:
Forewords
Marion von Osten and Grant Watson
bauhaus imaginista
Chapter 1
Corresponding With
Marion von Osten and Grant Watson
Introduction
Magdalena Droste
Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus Manifesto
Partha Mitter
Teaching Art at Santiniketan and Weimar: Some Unexpected Meeting Points
Anshuman Dasgupta
The Intimate and the Contingent: Art and Craft in the Pedagogy of Santiniketan
The Otolith Group
Living in an O Horizon
Helena Čapková
Framing Renshichirō Kawakita’s Transcultural Legacy and His Pedagogy
Yoshimasa Kaneko
On the Reception of Johannes Itten’s Art Education in Japan
Hiromitsu Umemiya
Manual for Teaching Thinking through Construction (1934): An Introduction
Luca Frei
Model for a Pedagogical Vehicle
Chapter 2
Learning From
Marion von Osten and Grant Watson
Introduction
Fabienne Eggelhöfer
Paul Klee’s Pictures of Architectural Tapestries
Susanne Leeb
Books on World Art from the 1920s: On the Ambivalence of a Discursive Awakening
Kader Attia
Colonial Melancholia
Mohamed Melehi
The Bauhaus as a Catalyst
Virginia Gardner Troy
The Andean Textile Paradigm at the Bauhaus
Elissa Auther
The Appropriation of the Ancient Past in Modern Fibre Art
Elvira Espejo
Watch and Learn: Local Instructions from My Community
Ailton Krenak and Bené Fonteles
The Bauhaus and Indigenous Cultural Production
Paulo Tavares
Des-Habitat
Chapter 3
Moving Away
Marion von Osten and Grant Watson
Introduction
Hilde Heynen
Anticipating the Future: Three Lines of Development
Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley
Designing Life
Daniel Talesnik
The Red Itinerary
Thomas Flierl
The CIAM Protest: From Moscow to the Patris II (1932)
Zoe Zhang
Modern Craft and Art (1932): An Introduction
Eduard Kögel
Useful Tradition? Walter Gropius meets China (or I. M. Pei)
Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan
Designing Life in India
Regina Bittner
Design for Need: Sudhakar Nadkarni’s Milk Kiosk
Zvi Efrat
Arieh Sharon’s Nigerian Campus Project: Ife University (1960–85)
Wendelien van Oldenborgh
Housing with Shadows and Mirrors: Notes towards a Work
Chapter 4
Still Undead
Marion von Osten and Grant Watson
Introduction
Melissa Venator
Kurt Schwerdtfeger’s Reflektorische Lichtspiele (Reflecting Light Plays, 1922)
Christian Hiller
bauhaus past forward
Tom Holert
From Giving to Unforgiving Light: Remarks on the Kaleidoscopic and the Stroboscopic
Adrian Rifkin
Untimely lessons, or how we could no longer learn from the Bauhaus
Gavin Butt
Polytechnics and Punks: The 1970s After-life of the Bauhaus
László Moholy-Nagy
Sketch for a Score for a Mechanized Eccentric
Notes
Contributors
bauhaus imaginista: The Project
Acknowledgments
Picture Credits
Index
