The impacts of Bauhaus on stage design

The Bauhaus occupies a place of its own in the history of 20th century culture, architecture, design, art and new media. One of the first colleges of design, it brought together a number of the most outstanding contemporary architects and artists and was not only an innovative training center but also a place of production and a focus of international debate. At a time when industrial society was in the grip of a crisis, the Bauhaus stood almost alone in asking how the modernization process could be mastered by means of design. Founded in Weimar in 1919, the Bauhaus rallied masters and students who sought to reverse the split between art and production by returning to the crafts as the foundation of all artistic activity and developing exemplary designs for objects and spaces that were to form part of a more humane future society. The Bauhaus moved to Dessau at a time of rising economic fortunes, becoming the municipally funded College of Design. Almost all masters moved with it, while former students became junior masters in charge of the workshops. Dessau produced famous works of art and architecture and influential designs in the years between 1926 and 1932. Walter Gropius resigned as director on April 1, 1928 under the pressure of constant struggles for the Bauhaus survival. He was succeeded by the Swiss architect Hannes Meyer (1889-1954) whose work sought to shape a harmonious society. Despite his successes, Hannes Meyer´s Marxist convictions became a problem for the city council amidst the political turbulence of Germany in 1929, and the following year he was removed from his post. Under Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) the Bauhaus developed from 1930 into a technical college of architecture with subsidiary art and workshop departments. After the Nazis became the biggest party in Dessau at the elections, the Bauhaus was forced to move in September 1932. Its fresh start in Berlin was short-lived. The Bauhaus dissolved itself under pressure from the Nazis in 1933. The building is the ultimate goal of all fine art, the Bauhaus manifesto proclaimed back in 1919. Architecture training at the Bauhaus in Weimar was initially the prerogative of Walter Gropius private architectural practice and for a short time courses were run by his partner Adolf Meyer and in association with the building trades school in Weimar. The Bauhaus workshops were involved in these efforts through Gropius office. This collaboration produced the Haus am Horn and other buildings in 1923. Plans for a Bauhaus estate remained unimplemented. Some new methods based on specific types and standardization were employed not only to produce new architecture but to anticipate a new lifestyle through this architecture. The first masters appointed to the Bauhaus were artists. Countless ideas produced by modern painting once it shed its old constraints now lie fallow, awaiting their implementation in the trades, Walter Gropius wrote in 1923. Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and other Bauhaus artists had departed from the traditional concept of images, turning to abstraction in the years leading up to World War I, and started to analyze the laws of artistic design with new theories and doctrines of art. Many of their works made a highly organized impression, contrasting sharply with a contemporary reality that was perceived as chaotic. The Bauhaus stage, run by Oskar Schlemmer, played a special role. The study of the relations between humans and space formed the point of departure for experiments drawing on the elementary theatrical components of space, form, color, light, movement, sound and language.