and internal dissent, this so-called spiritual stage of the Bauhaus lasted only
until 1923 , replaced during its second phase ( 1923 – 1925 ) by new teaching
methods based on quasi-scientific ideas and a machine age ethic. The third
phase began when, in 1925 (continuing roughly until 1928 ), the Weimar
government withdrew financial support, forcing the school to relocate to
Dessau. It was there that Gropius built his Bauhaus school building—a
monument to functionalism in which outward visual form is organically
related to its internal function. It was in Dessau, too, that the workshop was
transformed into a kind of laboratory program, and where, during a short
spurt of economic growth, the school, having tailored its teachings to the
demands of industry, developed products that rightfully represented a
Bauhaus style. In 1928 Gropius retired leaving the Bauhaus to Hannes
Meyer (a devout socialist) who was removed in 1931. The directorship next
went to Mies Van der Rohe, who moved the school one more time before its
permanent closing to an old telephone factory in Berlin.
Before its demise the Bauhaus was one of the most influential
design institutions in the world in the fields of architecture, furniture,
fixtures, textiles, scenic design, typography, and advertising. Its students
were taught to think of themselves not as divorced from society, but as
integral to it. Typographers, for example, were not aesthetic specialists nor
service-oriented craftspersons, but practitioners of communications open to
all possibilities—from abstract to conventional materials.
The Bauhaus typography workshop contributed ideas collected
under the banner of the New Typography, the movement of progressive
typographers and advertising artists who rebelled against antiquated tenets
of design. This was a philosophy, not a style, based on the dictum that
“form follows function,” in which typography became a virtual machine for
communication. The modern movement of the 1920 s, though a rebellious
one, reconciled contemporary and classical values by rejecting timeworn
verities in favor of timeless utility. Functionalism was the hallmark of
Bauhaus typography.
For decades, a tension has existed in typography between
rationalism and expressionism, or rather objective versus subjective
aesthetics. Jan Tschichold, who helped codify the New Typography in 1925
and eventually returned to traditional methods, wrote in his decidedly
conservative The Form of the Book: “The aim of typography must not be
expression, least of all self-expression....In a masterpiece of typography,
the artist’s signature has been eliminated. What some may praise as
personal styles are in reality small and empty peculiarities, frequently
damaging, that masquerade as innovations.” Yet despite this admonition,
Tschichold was the chief proselytizer for a movement that attacked visual
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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