#SQUADGOALS (43)
By:
October 25, 2017
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by HILOBROW friends and regulars during 2017, on the subject of our favorite squads.
I’m probably not the only person who got into Bauhaus (the legendary German architecture and design school) through Bauhaus (the proto-goth band that formed in 1978). My 17-year-old self didn’t admit it to a boy I liked in Germany when he showed me a book about the school. Just a few weeks later, I’d gone from “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by the Bauhaus to the Bauhaus Archiv in Berlin.
It’s hard to name one thing that captivated me about the Bauhaus because the Bauhaus was never one thing. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s photos captured those Bauhaus lives on film: the spiraled costumes of the Triadic Ballet that Oskar Schlemmer choreographed, the Bauhaus jazz band playing banjo and trombone, Xanti Schawinsky’s messy curls and gap-toothed smile, students hanging out of their balconies to smile for the camera, the placid face of Johannes Itten, who taught color theory and led a sect of students who ate a macrobiotic diet and smelled heavily of garlic. There was flirting and some open marriages. There are the vibrant tapestries and wallpapers designed in Gunta Stölzl’s workshop, the compact and rationalized Frankfurt Kitchen designed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, the paintings you know by Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. There were the three architects who were the iconic directors of the school: Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. And there were the Nazis that came and shut the whole thing down. The Bauhäusler fled to Europe and the US, where some regrouped at Black Mountain College and the New Bauhaus: the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
The Bauhaus is the school I wish I could’ve attended, and maybe in some ways I did — twenty-five years after I learned the Bauhaus wasn’t just a band, I finished a PhD in architecture and became a design professor. (I never played in a goth band, however.)
#SQUADGOALS: Annie Nocenti on THE WILD BUNCH | Alice Boone on PRETTY LITTLE LIARS | Gordon Dahlquist on BOWIE’S BAND | Rob Wringham on THE HOME GUARD | Jennifer Krasinski on WATERSHIP DOWN RABBITS | Annalee Newitz on ROBIN HOOD’S MERRY PALS | Adrienne Crew on THE BLOOMSBURY GROUP | Mark Kingwell on THE HONG KONG CAVALIERS | Adam McGovern on KAMANDI’S FAMILY | John Overholt on THE CLUB | Greg Rowland on THE VULTURE SQUADRON | Sara Ryan on BETSY, TACY & TIB | Chelsey Johnson on VI ÄR BÄST! | Brian Berger on THE JOHN FORD STOCK COMPANY | Sherri Wasserman on THE WARRIORS | Jessamyn West on FAREYNIKTE PARTIZANER ORGANIZATSYE | Josh Glenn on DADA | Matthew De Abaitua on THE TIME | Mandy Keifetz on THE FOUNDING FATHERS | William Nericcio on ZOOT SUIT PACHUCOS | Deb Chachra on FIREFLY CREW | Matthew Battles on THE ANIMAL FAMILY | Ingrid Schorr on THE HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS | Joe Alterio on THE USUAL GANG OF IDIOTS | Dan Reines on THE BREAKFAST CLUB | Rob Walker on LES TROIS INSÉPARABLES | Devin McKinney on 1975 RED SOX | Steph Burt on DAMAGE CONTROL | Elina Shatkin on THE HOLOGRAMS | Chris Spurgeon on THE ALKALI METALS | Carl Wilson on NEW YORK SCHOOL POETS | Barbara Bogaev on THE MOD SQUAD | Franklin Bruno on THE AACM | Judith Zissman on THE FUTURIANS | Mimi Zeiger on ARCHIGRAM | Jacob Mikanowski on THE RATBASTARDS | Lynn Peril on THE DALY SISTERS | Anindita Basu Sempere on MEG MURRY’S FAMILY | Libi Rose on THE ENIAC TEAM | Gary Panter on THE TRIBE OF HIPPIES | Peter Doyle on CORNEL WILDE BOYS | Ken Layne on THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG | Molly Wright Steenson on BAUHAUS | Katie Hennessey on BEAT POETS | Mimi Lipson on THE RUNAWAYS | Jordan Ellenberg on BOURBAKI | Michael Campochiaro on THE SUICIDE SQUAD | Deborah Wassertzug on THE BLOODHOUND GANG | Colin Dickey on ACÉPHALE | Douglas Wolk on SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY | David Smay on THE MYSTIC KNIGHTS OF THE OINGO BOINGO | Karinne Keithley Syers on BLACKLIPS PERFORMANCE CULT.
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