How the Bauhaus Kept Things Weird

Think of the Bauhaus and the images that spring to mind will be streamlined, stylish, and minimal: the Dessau building’s clean lines and vertical lettering, Marcel Breuer’s Wassily Chair, the Wagenfeld lamp, Marianne Brandt’s teapot, or Max Bill’s kitchen clock. One might even think of a descendant of the Bauhaus, like IKEA or Apple. Yet while these aesthetics are certainly true to the Modernist design school, they only tell one side of the story. Many imitators have missed the element of Bauhaus that breathed life into what might have become sterile functionalist designs; the surreal, sensual, irrational, and instinctual spirit of the Bauhaus.

To understand this other, weirder Bauhaus, one must return to the crucible in which it was formed. The German architect Walter Gropius had returned from World War I, having survived numerous near-death experiences and traumas, to find his country near-bankrupt. There was an atmosphere of exhaustion but also a nearly hysterical sense of hope. The Kaiser had fled to Holland, the Spartacists were taking over the streets, and revolution was in the air. In the absence of paid work, Gropius and his fellow architects began to dream and conjured up apparitions of Paradiso in stark contrast to the Inferno they’d just endured.