Bauhaus 1919-1933 [Hardcover]

Barry Bergdoll (Author), Leah Dickerman (Author), Benjamin Buchloh (Author), Brigid Doherty (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 11, 2009

The Bauhaus, the school of art and design founded in Germany in 1919 and shut down by the Nazis in 1933, brought together artists, architects and designers--among them Anni and Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Lilly Reich, Oskar Schlemmer, Gunta Stolzl--in an extraordinary conversation on the nature of art in the industrial age. Aiming to rethink the form of modern life, the Bauhaus became the site of a dazzling array of experiments in the visual arts that have profoundly shaped the world today. Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity, published to accompany a major multimedia exhibition, is The Museum of Modern Art's first comprehensive treatment of the subject since its famous Bauhaus exhibition of 1938, and offers a new generational perspective on the twentieth century's most influential experiment in artistic education. Organized in collaboration with the three major Bauhaus collections in Germany (the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau and the Klassic Stiftung Weimar), Bauhaus 1919-1933 examines the extraordinarily broad spectrum of the school's products, including industrial design, furniture, architecture, graphics, photography, textiles, ceramics, theater and costume design, painting and sculpture. Many of the objects discussed and illustrated here have rarely if ever been seen or published outside Germany. Featuring approximately 400 color plates, richly complemented by documentary images, Bauhaus 1919-1933 includes two overarching essays by the exhibition's curators, Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman, that present new perspectives on the Bauhaus. Shorter essays by more than 20 leading scholars apply contemporary viewpoints to 30 key Bauhaus objects, and an illustrated narrative chronology provides a dynamic glimpse of the Bauhaus' lived history.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The school's creative clashes were a reflection of how much their participants had at stake, both aesthetically and politically. All of them lived somewhere between the world as they saw it and the world as they wished it could be. Their yearning, never fulfilled, haunts you long after you leave the show." --The New York Times, November 9, 2009 (Nicolai Ouroussoff)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 328 pages
• Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York (December 11, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870707582
• ISBN-13: 978-0870707582
• Product Dimensions: 12.3 x 9.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #312,589 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A stunningly smart and beautiful book., November 20, 2009

By 

Louise Harpman "Louise Harpman" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bauhaus 1919-1933 (Hardcover)

The Bauhaus has always been familiar and, in some ways, "known" by architects and architectural educators. We inherit its legacy, with only cursory knowledge of the social and political context that allowed its rise, and ultimately denied its continuation. And yet, this book, which accompanies the show currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art, makes it clear that architects too frequently take only the gleanings of this school and movement--which comes to be known as a "style." Curators Leah Dickerman and Barry Bergdoll craft a brilliant historical narrative of the school and its influence. The essays are probing and extremely well-written. For those of us who pledge allegiance to the stunning textiles, typography, color studies, paintings, glass, architecture, and furniture (all of which are beautifully represented in the book), this is a welcome "rounding out" of our education.

Louise Harpman

Associate Professor of Architecture

University of Texas at Austin

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent., February 17, 2011

By 

Michael Maguire "boobieguy" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bauhaus 1919-1933 (Hardcover)

Beautiful book. Excellent quality prints of culture-shifting and inspiring works of art.

The large-scale size is great for an artist who wants a good view of the works, for a student studying the Bauhaus art history, or for a art-lover who wants a beautiful coffee table book.

I personally used several of the images in a book cover design class I took while at Parsons for a project about the Bauhaus. The scans I made of the art printed in this book were perfect and totally made the project.

Would make a great personal purchase, as well as a gift. I would highly recommend this to any lover of art.

4.0 out of 5 stars Memories of an Exhibit, August 13, 2010

By 

Kkeenan2 "kkeenan2" - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Bauhaus 1919-1933 (Hardcover)

As a child of an architect who ADORED Frank Lloyd Wright and the art deco/bauhaus/midcentury modern styles, and has visited the Bauhaus Museum in Berlin and was lucky enough to live in NYC and saw the exhibit, I knew the moment I saw this I wanted to have it for my home. The pieces from the exhibit are presented in a coherent manner, it shows a varying range of in the style along with its evolution and historical context, and dispays all about the era of this design style that I love... this one is out on display as art in its own right and to show my love of all that is in the book.