Crystal symbol ARTS
BRYAN ROBERTSON
There is something very touching, through obvi- ous vulnerability, in the idea of artists from several different countries forming themselves into a group intent upon reformation. The mem- bers of such a group cannot be equal in their degree of gift and they must all have slightly varying intentions. The common touchstone is idealism, and it is the concerted, dedicated effort towards this goal of improvement which moves the heart when the usual indifference or opposi- tion is considered. Four or five or a dozen men of goodwill do not spring out of bed simul- taneously one morning with a common idea: always one man formulates an idea with which to implement a plan, and, by the time the idea has been reinforced with a creed, he finds that it strikes corresponding chords in the minds of a handful of other men.
Such a man was Walter Gropius in 1919 when he gathered around him in Weimar a group of especially gifted architects, designers and artists, all of whom longed for a better world. Gropius was a catalyst of genius; his instinctive idealism, which could be nourished by design in its broadest aspects, was extended and ampli- fied by Klee, Kandinsky, Breuer, Moholy-Nagy, Albers and others. The means of generating the shared ideal were explored under the roof of a remarkable building devised by Gropius called the Bauhaus; and the present exhibition at Bur- lington House is an attempt to state in the clearest terms the ways in which the guiding spirits of the Bauhaus tried to release, accord- ing to established principles, the right kind and quantity of imaginative energy among their students. The exhibition is a moving occasion and I have been at pains to describe a little of the background spirit of the Bauhaus be- cause the show demands a particular mood of inquiry and humility in one's approach to its disclosures.
For the exhibition can only, finally, celebrate an idea which became an ideal, and this kind of thing is particularly difficult to pin down and walk around in physical terms, though it is easier with words. The Burlington House show, therefore, is not a great spectacle so much as a forum or an arena for debate, replete with dia- grams, programmes, teaching studies of method and stylistic approach, didactic exercises, plans and prototypes. To comprehend the full signifi- cance of the Bauhaus and the extent of its in- fluence, you would need a year off from work, a good deal of money for travel, and a sheaf of aeroplane tickets to take you all over the world and, most of all, across the American con- tinent. For the Bauhaus, begun when Germany was a shambles, in the process of military and economic defeat, was closed down immediately the Nazis came to power, by 1933. The triumph of the Bauhaus can best be appreciated on the American continent, for it was there that Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, another architect of genius, and the great colourist Albers, with others, all found refuge and a sympathetic climate in which to propagate their theories.
When it started in Weimar in 1919, the initial prospectus of the Bauhaus had a woodcut by Lyonel Feininger, himself an excellent artist, on the cover consisting of a stylised cathedral, with three stars, the whole composition composed in a manner similar to a fugue by Bach, based on a theme of a few angles repeated in variations. The proclamation inside ended with this statement : `Let us create a new guild of craftsmen, with- out the class distinctions which raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist. Together let us conceive and create the new building of the future, which can embrace architecture, and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will rise one day towards heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.'
The crystal symbol, in one sense, could not withstand the guns and gas chambers of the Nazis; it was certainly clouded by the sheer pressures of philistinism in most of Europe, but somehow its structure has survived sufficiently in the buildings of Mies van der Rohe in New York and Chicago, the architecture of John Rodgers in San Francisco, and Joseph Albers's teachings on colour at Black Mountain, Caro- lina. These last so upset and intimidated Robert Rauschenberg, for example, that for many years he could only use white in his painting and the indigenous colour of natural substances in his collages—Albers had got across to him the extraordinary power and reponsibilities of primary colours.
I can think instantly of three examples of the Bauhaus influence in England, though there are others: one, the Simpsons building in Picca- dilly, which was designed in the 'thirties by Moholy-Nagy through the intervention of friends, when he came here as a refugee at that time; two, the village college at Impington, commissioned from Gropius, also in the 'thirties, by Henry Morris, the inspired edu- cation officer for Cambridgeshire (known to his educational colleagues as 'Bloody Henry' be- cause, as a scourging wit of unswerving drive, Morris derided them for failing to understand the twentieth century). I have no doubt what- ever that in an England fairly besotted with insularity and ignorance, which had refused to pay attention to William Morris and had ignored the example of Eric Gill (the Gabo- Nicholson-Hepworth-Martin 'Circle' movement came later), these commissions were both smuggled in at the back door. A building is a building but my third example has been cor- rupted and confused by ignorance—namely, the basic design course as practised as an integral part of our students' training at art colleges throughout the country. For this `system,' which has degenerated into a recipe for making imitation modern paintings and sculptures, came originally from the poetic insights of Paul Klee.
For anyone visiting the Burlington House exhibition, it is absolutely essential to read Klee's The Thinking Eye; these discourses will illuminate many screens of diagrammatic illus- tration, presenting an otherwise unalluring facade. Besides these, there is much to enjoy in Klee's own work at Burlington House, as well as in the canvases of Kandinsky and Albers, and the marvellously topical and con- centrated paintings of Moholy-Nagy, who, like Picabia among the Dadaists, is obviously due for reappraisal.
Last words of advice before visiting the show : go as an inquisitive student with a note- book, make several visits, and do some back- ground homework. These men tried to make the world' a better place, and as there's an almost unanimous counter-activity, it is worth paying proper attention to what they tried— and often succeeded—in doing. Allow it a gestatory few weeks, and then start giving hell to the ow or your local authorities for that frowsily designed building or dud flyover round the corner: for this is the kind of documentary exhibition which clears the mind and gives us courage. I trust that students will forget the sit-ins and hold entire seminars at Burlington House throughout the winter.
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