Bauhaus Hustling: Tourism Trumps Idealism, part one

The Bauhaus orgy of puffery (it’s 90 years old!) at Berlin’s Martin Gropius Bau is packing them in. A weekday, and it’s wall to wall patrons! And the Bauhaus Triumvirate (Hellmut Seemann from Weimar’s Classic Foundation, Philipp Oswalt of THE Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, and Dr.Annemarie Jaeggi at the Bauhaus-Archiv-Berlin)) not to forget MOMA/NEW YORK (their greatest coup!) have gathered here 1000 artifacts to stun the masses.

Too bad the captions are in so small a typeface as to discourage attention! (I felt I was taking an eye test, especially with those captions on the floor!) Those busy beespatrons were buzzing around so quickly, I can’t believe they were getting enough pollen to turn it into esthetic honey! Yes, there were the old standbys like the African Throne co-designed by Marcel Breuer and Gunta Stolzl. And that great triangular crib with the standard Bauhaus tri-colors that always makes me fret for the memory of infants abused by its inhuman regularities.

And the boast of 1000 arty facts (with apologies to Mies, Much More Is Less, or Too Much Is a Mess) reminds me of Dr. Michael Siebenbrodt’s giganticism. When he began to direct the Bauhaus Museum in Weimar going on a decade, the collection was a piddling 800 –of a high quality. Now he has gathered 10,000 bits from the relatives of those 1250 students as well as faculty. Thanks to the atmospheric heights our auction houses have achieved, not even the Big Three can afford top stuff. (A Marianne Brandt teapot recently went for $361,000 at Sotheby’s.)

So it’s more and more of less and less. Siebenbrodt talked the Thuringian state legislature into coughing up 20,000,000 plus Euros for a new museum to accommodate these commodities. And that has triggered an endless squabble between Hellmut Seemann who wants it near the old museum and Gerd Zimmermann, rector of the Bauhaus Uni, who wants it near his HQ, the grand Henry van der Velde twinned masterpieces (1904-11).

That’s the only honest to God glorious building in town. And Gerd is willing to destroy a prize winning Mensa to win. It reminds me of the bitter fights Gropius had with his Masters! He discovered the only thing worse than a Teacher’s Pet is a Teacher who wants to be petted! They found his medieval dream of the apprentice/journeyman/master categories foolish. They wanted (and won) the Professor appellation.

One of the more beguiling items in the strange catalog (29.90 Euros on site, 69.90 E otherwise) is Dr. Peter Hahn’s piece on Pius’s 41st birthdays. All the Masters made paintings that alluded to the new media of gramophone and radio. And they were sneaky about whether they were teasing or praising the Boss. (Many found him tightly Prussian!) I call the catalog "strange" affectionately—because it’s a grab bag of many voices extemporizing. Dr. Anja Baumhoff’s piece on Herbert Bayer’s designs for trade fairs is an excellent example. In fact, if you read German, an even better orientation is the 24 page special edition Die Welt published for the exhibition.

One extremely idiosyncratic section of the exhibition is Christine Hill and her Volksboutique “Do It Yourself Bauhaus”. After watching disoriented crowds milling about, it was surprising to see not a few getting to work like elementary school students in her DIY booth! Hill is a Professor and Chair of (get this) Media, Trend & Public Appearance in the media faculty of the Bauhaus Uni in Weimar. (I always wondered what happened to installation makers when (and if) they grew up!) Her People Shop began in Berlin after the fall of the Wall when Ossis abandoned their clothes and furniture as they fled West.

Chris recycled them for the thousands who were seeking the New Freedom of Berlin. Her enclave’s walls are adorned with slogans like MY BAUHAUS IS BETTER THAN YOURS and Hannes Meyer’s slogan THE NEEDS OF THE PEOPLE NOT THE DICTATES OF LUXURY. She supplies a free 32 page DIY Bauhaus instigator that prods viewers into thinking originally. “En route to attending an early meeting for the planning 'Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model', I asked the cabbie to take me to the Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin. He asked rather carefully why the Bauhaus needed an archive.” (He had confused it with a chain of DIY building materials called Bauhaus.)

"In no way do I perceive such a response as being ignorant, nor do I poke fun at my cab driver’s interpretation. Rather, such an exchange indicates where the name, and understanding of the name has landed, and how it resonates within vernacular culture."

Chris, she wants you to know, is no snob. She is aggressively demotic. Read her brochure carefully, especially excerpts from her “books”. Snippet City!