Spencer Lecture: Context and History of Art & Design Education (Bauhaus & Black Mountain College)
We will explore the impact of the concepts of multiplicity and experience in art education by contrasting the teaching at Black Mountain College in the USA (which had an important influence upon 20C art) and the Bauhaus in Germany which likewise influenced artistic practice, but which arguably had a stronger impact upon design practitioners especially in relation to modernist design. Interestingly, Black Mountain College was founded by Josef and Anni Albers – Josef Albers had been a prominent professor at the Bauhaus.
We will examine the importance to both institutions of a Deweyan experiential and craft led framework – and how the idea of the ‘total work of art’ can be read in a universalist way or in a more fragmented fashion.
Having examined the underpinnings of some key ideas in arts education and having identified an interesting rift between some art/design tendencies we will question the merging of art and design under the label of ‘visual arts’ that occurred when art colleges and polytechnics came together to form the new universities in 1992.
Bauhaus (place of construction/schools of building)
Joseph Albers (originally Itten’s student)
Publishes: Interaction of colour, 1963
Develops a Perception-based model of ‘colour-action’
His focus is upon (material) process
wants to teach ‘vision’ wants to teach seeing
In keeping with the increased importance of industry at the Bauhaus, Albers’ instruction was geared toward GENERAL DESIGN principles, which he saw as a means of visual organisation.
Note his intense dislike of expressionism
Importance of experimentation
students would select a specialisation in a specific field when joining a workshop.
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
Importance of technology
Student explores the aesthetic and-and the communicative properties of the material
Moholy-Nagy teaching was direct towards simplicity and elements of expression. -‘to be a user of machines to be of the spirit of the century.
He made student organise natural and industrial matter by the surface effect in elaborate taxonomies/tactile charts. they did so according to set categories, the important being ‘surface aspect’, which related to how one would use material to how one would use material to achieve a desired sensory result, presumably from a product one might design.
Johannes Itten
Itten Stressed direct interaction with the physical would- he saw the study of nature as av=bove all else a study on the purely material’ through which we might discover the inexhaustible wealth of textures and their combinations.
students did more than develop technical skills as they might with earlier traditions of instructions Itten believed that reality was filtered through the senses. He claimed that through exercises dealing with materials and materiality a new world cloud is discovered. Ittens method stressed bodily mediation; his exercises involved looking closely and intently so as to discover the world anew through sharpened and refined senses.
Black mountain college
Progressive environment- liberal arts college
Students black mountain collage attended two compulsory courses.
The practice of art was undertaken by all students
BCN emphasised and not results
our way of handling facts and our selves amid the facts is more important than the facts them selves
The absence of conventional grades and credits and the central importances accorded to the arts
We will examine the importance to both institutions of a Deweyan experiential and craft led framework – and how the idea of the ‘total work of art’ can be read in a universalist way or in a more fragmented fashion.
Having examined the underpinnings of some key ideas in arts education and having identified an interesting rift between some art/design tendencies we will question the merging of art and design under the label of ‘visual arts’ that occurred when art colleges and polytechnics came together to form the new universities in 1992.
Bauhaus (place of construction/schools of building)
Joseph Albers (originally Itten’s student)
Publishes: Interaction of colour, 1963
Develops a Perception-based model of ‘colour-action’
His focus is upon (material) process
wants to teach ‘vision’ wants to teach seeing
In keeping with the increased importance of industry at the Bauhaus, Albers’ instruction was geared toward GENERAL DESIGN principles, which he saw as a means of visual organisation.
Note his intense dislike of expressionism
Importance of experimentation
students would select a specialisation in a specific field when joining a workshop.
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
Importance of technology
Student explores the aesthetic and-and the communicative properties of the material
Moholy-Nagy teaching was direct towards simplicity and elements of expression. -‘to be a user of machines to be of the spirit of the century.
He made student organise natural and industrial matter by the surface effect in elaborate taxonomies/tactile charts. they did so according to set categories, the important being ‘surface aspect’, which related to how one would use material to how one would use material to achieve a desired sensory result, presumably from a product one might design.
Johannes Itten
Itten Stressed direct interaction with the physical would- he saw the study of nature as av=bove all else a study on the purely material’ through which we might discover the inexhaustible wealth of textures and their combinations.
students did more than develop technical skills as they might with earlier traditions of instructions Itten believed that reality was filtered through the senses. He claimed that through exercises dealing with materials and materiality a new world cloud is discovered. Ittens method stressed bodily mediation; his exercises involved looking closely and intently so as to discover the world anew through sharpened and refined senses.
Black mountain college
Progressive environment- liberal arts college
Students black mountain collage attended two compulsory courses.
The practice of art was undertaken by all students
BCN emphasised and not results
our way of handling facts and our selves amid the facts is more important than the facts them selves
The absence of conventional grades and credits and the central importances accorded to the arts