Bauhaus at MOMA

I've just finished browsing the very well produced web site for the Bauhaus exhibition at MOMA (see my previous post for a discussion of the exhibition design).

The Bauhaus was a German design and craft school, in existence from 1919 until it's closure by the Nazi regime in the early '30s. Its proponents maintained that the building was the ultimate form of art, and that art and craft were not separate disciplines. From the Bauhaus manifesto:

“Let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen without the class-distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artists! Let us desire, conceive, and create the new building of the future together. It will combine architecture, sculpture, and painting in a single form, and will one day rise towards the heavens from the hands of a million workers as the crystalline symbol of a new and coming faith.”

Perhaps because of this desire to create 'total art' and it's focus on experimentation, the school and it's works were extremely influential across a variety of disciplines, including graphic design, illustration and architecture.

For more images and information, take a look around the MOMA Bauhaus site and also at the Bauhaus Museum of Design—really interesting stuff.