S01E04 Was macht kreativ? Über den Bauhaus-Vorkurs

The Bauhaus. World-famous art school of the 1920s. Mythos of the modern. But what's behind the legend? Baut Bauhaus. The podcast of the Bauhaus Archive. The museum for the creation of Berlin. This question is on the ground. Welcome to the new episode of the Baut Bauhaus. I am Adriana Kappsreiter and look forward to the next series of talks about the most famous school of the modern. School is also our keyword. We want to take an excursion into the teaching at the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus lecture is our topic today. A kind of basic art education that all students had to absorb at the beginning of their studies. I have invited Nina Wiedemeyer, one of our curator at the Bauhaus Archive, who has particularly expressed himself in the lecture. Welcome Nina. Hello Adriana. You have together with your team released an exercise book for the Bauhaus lecture. And for this, a lot of material from the depths of our archive is evaluated. Therefore, as an expert, I can directly ask you, what is actually this lecture? I think the Bauhaus did not have the word "preparation". There were already other high schools. But at the Bauhaus, it did have a lot of knowledge. Because many people who had to go through this basic education as a student at the Bauhaus, who later took part in their own teaching at the art schools and so on. So you can imagine that this way. You come as a student at the Bauhaus and then you have to go through this pre-chance. There is a basic situation. And that is also something that may be special. That everyone has to do before they then specialize and go to the workshops or maybe after that after an architectural training. That must have also contributed to the fact that people have understood themselves as a community. So everyone has somehow developed their own sense. But there was a general basis for the whole course at this school. In fact, it was also very important to limit yourself from what art education was before. Absolutely. So I think that is already, so to say these experimental exercises. Now let's do an atem stenogram. Or let's use the writing machine as a drawing tool and create a graphic out of collars and dots. Or go looking for a case. That's something innovative and that doesn't have so much to do with drawing an act or drawing it according to nature. That also comes before. So we also have very properly drawn granite pots and animal skins that have been drawn off. But there is simply a big spectrum or I read out there also a great desire to teach and think about these tasks. And maybe you can already say that it was very important to discover material, to get to know yourself better. So that was very important to someone like Johannes Ithen. Really an idea to develop with what I actually want to do. So a pretty difficult question. And to promote people in their properties. And also in a certain intensity. So maybe that has something to do with craftsmanship. To set up a task that is also so openly formulated, like in the teaching of Joseph Albers. He throws a pack of paper there and disappears and says, take care of yourself with this material. And I don't give you what's supposed to come out of it. And then comes back and says, no, that's maybe not what I'm imagining. Ships and kindergarten programs. So there is already a feedback system, but also I think a trust in the students who started building there. That they find their own way to deal with the material. Oh, that's kind of a nice idea. A kind of trust in research, that they are able to do something of their own. Because the education at the art academy was very dry. I don't know if you can say intellectually. It was academic in a sense. So there were certain heroes that you celebrated. What was I, Leonardo da Vinci and concerts. Then a lot was drawn out, drawn to nature. But it wasn't actually designed to be really out of the box. Or how do you see it? There are both. As I said, there is also the animal shadow drawing. There is also the occupation with the old masters. In architecture education, for example, we also have drawings from pantheon in Rome. So that wasn't the case. They also drew up and made things and invented them. But I think the tension is much bigger. For example, I like the story of Josef Albers in the building house. He was, I think, a couple of thirty. He was an educated artist, studied at international art schools. He had already had education experience at schools. You had to focus on that again. A lot of young Johannes Itten. And then there was a commission after the lecture that was then judged. Yes, can you continue? Can you become a regular student at the building house? And then Mr. Albers said, that's not going to happen. I think so. So he looked and found on a piece of waste from glass bottles and then put them together into glass frames. But then, nevertheless, when he finished his course, he got into these glass works and then came through. And then he became a very famous teacher at the building house himself. That's a great story. I don't know it yet. Yes, that's what I wanted to get out of it. So just at the beginning, as you said, the lecture was developed by Johannes Itten. There was already someone. And Paolo Klee and Kandinsky, who always gave basic artistic courses, there was already someone. They actually already found their art. Do you think that the students have very influenced their image of what art is at all? Or do you think, can you really imagine that they could be free then? Well, you can see that with the solutions of the tasks that are, for example, in the collection of the building house archive. There are students who work like one another. So, for example, from the lecture by Kandinsky, you know, or you can guess, everyone had to sort out a color circle. But then there are other things that are unique. I can imagine that it was a very openly formulated task. And that's why very, very different things came out of it. And I think if you change the view a little bit and also don't look for it very much, that's for example the textile class at the building house. And if you always look for it, how much clay is actually hidden there, which has led it artistically. And, for example, a Gertrude Arndt says, I have nothing to do with Paolo Klee, right? So I think my textile work from the make-up and so on, I think you can discover that if you'd like to, of course. With Johannes Itten, for example, you can totally see that it's also close to the artistic works of the teachers. Yes, of course, it's kind of easy to break it down now. Of course, some of them didn't find their teachers quite great, and some of them didn't, as we did at school. And the teachers have also copied each other. So what I find interesting, the teacher is now, you can say that this is the immaterial heritage of the building house, but that's not as strict under a copyright as a picture or an art work. That means this job position has been taken over by Mr. Albers from Mr. Itten. So you notice this occupation with material, or, for example, paper, or sound, or glass and so on, that you build a kind of sculpture out of waste and so on. So that's a job position, you can see that. Aha. Even when it comes to Moholy Natch, they may have looked at each other somehow, or knew that from their own education, that the students then took these things with them in their own teaching and so on. Sometimes it's not so easy to take the course more precisely. You brought us a special exercise for this, the so-called Atem Stenogram. This is a exercise that Johannes Itten, the first teacher to have brought the Gropius to the building house to develop this focus. And we have brought a whole series of focus exercises together, my colleague Friederike Holländer and I. And that was kind of a great fun, but also a great speculation, because there is now in the building archive and nowhere else not in the envelope of beautiful sorted instructions and exercises. That means we have, for example, in Johannes Itten's diary, and there is, for example, "I'm going to do Atem Stenogram." So, what should that actually be? I wonder. And then you can kind of speculate. On the other hand, we also have quite a lot of drawings and results from the focus of different students. And then you can guess whether you believe that maybe a drawing that is very printed with coal on a sheet of paper could maybe be an Atem Stenogram. And what I also like very much about this Atem Stenogram exercise is that Mr. Itten takes a office technique, the stenography, and displaces it and makes an exercise for his art education. So that seems very simple to me to be. Yes, that's actually Mr. Jöst partly. We don't even know exactly what it looks like. So we have evidence of what was practiced in the course, but we also don't know whether it really was part of the teaching plan or how much we actually know about it. We have quite a lot of broke pieces. There are artists who have also made a part with basic education, like Paul Klee. They have left behind a large number of books. We have others who have shaped the course very extensively, such as the "Unger Las Lomo Holi Natch." There are a few scribbles, so very few drawings. He wrote books, so it's really a reconstruction work. And that's why you may not even be able to say that there was the course, but there were three teacher personalities who shaped the course. And we have left behind a lot of material, from the time of the building house. But those are memories that a teacher left behind a long time after his time at the building house, like Johannes Itten. He then wrote a book about his teacher, but there are really a lot of years in between. And I think he has also taught in between that he worked around it and so on. And our joy in the subject of the course is really to take this different material seriously and a diary, a note in a letter, maybe a picture signature on a drawing. There are light images on the wall or something else. And to take it all seriously and to ask, what exactly was taught at the building house? And how can you imagine that? So it's really a bunch of broken pieces. And you can also say the opposite, and which are met years later. And what I really like, for example, Joseph Albers, who then goes into exile in the 1930s, he can't take a lot of luggage with him, but what does he take with him? To work with a lot of students, because he wants to continue to teach. So this high appreciation for the things that were created, the job position that he set, I think that's pretty impressive. Yes, that's in all cases. Yes, as you can see, we deal with students and students' work at the building house archive. You can already say that. Yes, and that's something you might forget, when you think of the clichés of the building house, furniture, expensive design and so on. It wasn't a production city, it was a school. And there were a bunch of young people who liked to go out and have seen them, through their clothes and their behavior. And that was also a young culture. The lecture was originally developed by Johannes Itten, even at the beginning in Weimar, shortly after the founding. Itten was a very special type. Painters, more precisely abstract, expressionistic painters, with an exaggerated hang to primary colors and contrasts, esoteric and mystic, a kind of guru personality. But he was often described as very authoritarian and streetly, with challenging teaching methods. Some were his approach, certainly too much. For example, when in the course of the war, he became a personal emotional painter. Today, there would be a trigger warning. But at the time, it was perhaps the right method for the one or the other, the extreme. In the end, many brought the history of time with them in the luggage and needed reflections. Accordingly, there were many movements and groups, the young people wanted to give a near ground, including the building house. I think this is very impressive, stories that are delivered by young students, who don't know exactly what's going on in Weimar. They don't know where to spend the night, when they arrive at the train station, because they know how the recording procedure is at this school. They go there and have very insecure economic conditions, and somehow have a drive to make their way. I find that very impressive. Yes, I totally agree with that. And I also have the impression that the building house teachers at the beginning knew it somehow. And maybe they wanted to give something to give their hand. I like to imagine an idea of you can overcome this trauma by doing something new. And what makes sense. Art has a lot to do with what is in it, so to speak. But exciting is also... Or let's say differently, do you think a person like Ithen would still work that way today? I'm not so sure. That's actually a very painful question, because the relationship between masters and students draws on for a very long time through the education at art schools. So that a personality of a class also has a lot of power over the students, how they deal with it. I mean, maybe a figure like Joseph Boyce whose birthday we celebrate is therefore such a famous, also a famous teacher personality, because he had set himself up in Düsseldorf and said, I give up these restrictions, everyone can come. And then they got overrun. So that's already difficult. But I think that teaching always has something to do with authority and also creativity has something to do with authority. You meet a association that you also stick to the rules. The rules for creativity or also an authority can be, I accept that you bring me something, that you can stick to these rules. That's in classical craft education and at the construction site somehow. So there is a teacher, Joseph Albers, and says, here, please, today it's about paper. It's forbidden to cut in with scissors or cut off paper. So those are the rules that I then reject. That's maybe also the authority of the material, that's the authority of the tool, but also the authority of the teacher. On the other hand, at the construction site there was something like a group criticism or something like that. Maybe not as romantic as you imagine it to be, that it was so free. But I think it was also important to give yourself feedback in the group and to take care of such techniques like all the works that were created in the semester, to present in a small exhibition and to talk about it together. And not only the teacher says what's good and what's bad, but you discuss it in the group and give yourself a feedback on the other side. Yes, that's kind of democratic. The teacher doesn't have the last word, not the very last. He has it somehow, because it is then needed, but there is at least another opinion. I like a story very much from Moholi Naatsch. There are very few, I don't see any signature from him from his class. A young student who was 20 years old, Erich Komarina, left a notebook. And those are one and a half pages, handwritten, it's very broken, what he writes from the class. Moholy Naatsch also had a strong accent and was not so easy to understand. And he writes, eleven sentences. And I think that's really charming, because I imagine Moholy, it was very, very important to say, you don't just have the meaning of the "she", but there are many other meanings and we want to learn them, to perceive them, to use them in the artistic production, the hearing sense, the touch sense and so on. And that's why he writes "Komarina" somehow, that might go a little far. It sounds like the title of a cool book, supposedly eleven sentences, I think it's good. Yes, so Albers said, throw an old cramp over the board. So you come here and it was also with a condition, recording condition, or it was nice to see that you had some kind of handwritten experience or even a group letter in the bag. People went there, they already had an art education or kind of a pedagogical experience. That was nice to see. And still it was like this, forget what you've done before and try again to leave the material paper. And what qualities does that have? And I think that was a bit of the approach, right? Yes, but then there is from this abstract, creative topic area, also very practical, handwritten things that make sense, namely that you deal with materials. What is actually the ownership of the material and what does it feel like? There are quite different models how you have experienced this material in the course. There are very strong with Johannes Itten in the form that was visited by Abfall, for example. And then you can also test the quality of the material and think about what you can do from something else, which may not be the original form that won it. With Albers there is a lot of paper, sound, and also the connection of two materials that become something different than what they, for example, if you squeeze through a piece of wood, then there is something that is only dependent on these two materials. And in Moholy there are such exercises to test something blind or to lay the material and to sort that there is such a kind of test scale. And then you can translate that into a drawing, a feeling when you stretch over this material with your hand. The building house as a school between craft and art. In the course, it was specifically called to collect experiences with materials, to draw and to listen to theories about art from the masters. But also experiment, to leave involved paths or even to jump limits to come up with a whole new solution. In the same way, we understand common creativity. That these experiences always depend on the person who provides the teaching was not different back then than it was today. Whether you liked or did not like Johannes Itten or Joseph Albers, whether you accepted her as an authority is an individual question. And a little bit of that is also common for the course. Not all were enthusiastic. So it's off. Why so often there were not only fans here. But we still want to stay on the abstract level and feel the creative spirit of the building house. But let's try now to find a guide for creative ideas. Creativity of all buildings. I have, you surely know this series Madman and Don Draper, who always has such great ideas. And he is asked how do you get a good idea and then he says, yes, you have to think about it for a long time and then you have to forget everything and then you have the good idea. That is definitely a good idea. Is that a personal question for me now? Or how does a good building house idea work? Let's try both. I think the good building house idea consists of a good art, a good instruction or a good job position. Or maybe I can even combine. For me personally, creativity means having a drive. A question, an initial, a good job position would be an initial. There comes a person and says, let's do an atem schedule. That would be an initial. I have a pen, I have a paper, I have my body, my breathing. That's how I can get out of it. That means creativity needs a question, a drive and also something more than you yourself, I think. It needs tools, it needs a response, it has to create a relationship. It can be material, maybe you can even be yourself by observing yourself. But I need a relationship network between people, things, materials to make something surprising and to be able to design. I have an opportunity to look at psychology, what creativity is. That's also a field of research of psychology and psychology has different approaches. It's not easy to measure creativity. How should you do that? By the way, psychologists have the same problem. If we look back, we can see that the memory is changed and so on. But what I found interesting was a phase description of creativity. There is a preparation phase. It makes sense. A phase where you collect information and materials, where you define the problem. Why do you do that? And the next phase is an incubation phase, an excretion phase. That's one where you shouldn't think about it. What Don Draper said is not entirely out of the air. It makes sense to let go and then hopefully the "aha" experience comes in the next step. Illumination. Then the enlightenment comes. That's the nice idea. And what you can't forget, after that there has to be a phase that really works. Creativity is good and beautiful, but when I think about something that doesn't fulfill its purpose, it's difficult again. Of course, how it is in art. Because the purpose of art is sometimes very difficult to grasp. The farmer was lucky to have the craft with him. We also have photographs from the course. But maybe two hands full. Really very little material. But in the focus room there is a black-and-white photo. You can see three people sleeping on the table. I like that a lot. I think that's very important. This "mousse phase". Let go of it, let go of it. Where you have the feeling that nothing happens. I think you need that. Yes, you forget that. That belongs to you. You don't do anything to let go of it. The pathology is actually an explanation. It has to do with the neocortex. I don't let go of the topic. But it really shows that an exciting condition can be very decisive for creative ideas. And this exciting condition speaks again what I said before. That there were challenging topics in the course. That it was also limited experiences. And then again this exciting story. How does it work together? That's exactly what a good lesson is about. This structuring or this presentation often in anecdotes or in the memories there is something like "and he leaves the room". There is an instruction. There is an announcement. What material, what task. Then the authority is removed and let them do this. There are also a few sentences about a new set in the building and there is a need to make sure that more discipline comes in here and the people are a little drunk. So this chaos and doing nothing and so on is always a bit involved with the optimization and the efficiency and maybe also the idea that comes from the craft. If you do something well, but before that too, Joseph Albers leaves the room and leaves the people with her paper. Then he comes back and says "I didn't imagine that. You have to do it again". And some of the students we also know from texts have been moitered and said "what should that be?" I can't use anything for that. I'm going to be here for hours and hours with this paper cream. But I think that's something to keep in mind. To keep out, to practice or as the sociologist Richard Sennett says, to get these 10,000 hours to the point where you can do something. Yes, yes. That's often the case in art. Either it's too chaotic and too wild often, it then has to be channelized the creative energy or there's this creative extra missing. And that was the idea of the building and to bring it together. And even if Walter Gropio wasn't so convinced that you can learn creativity the approaches were so that you at least tried it. What would you do if you personally needed a creative idea? There are certain situations where you think "I don't know. I need the extra a little bit". I think that something like "I don't know" or "the bewildering of your own fears and this "I think I can't do anything" belongs to every creative process unfortunately. And I need other people I would say. I had a very nice creative moment today. There was a designer who, Jan Körbis and a colleague Tulia Tassia in Curia and something was created which we didn't know with me alone but there was someone who said "Oh, you just said something I'll take it off and we'll strengthen it together in the conversation and then something happens where we all were surprised". A community. A real community work. Yes, that can also be I think and arise when you work very intensively I think it needs something unpredictable. Yes, that's true. And it often doesn't necessarily come from your own. You need something foreign which is not from your own shadow. For me creativity differentiates from experimenting because experiment means I have a very solid setting. I take a solid setting and I take that through to measure certain things first 10% and then 20% I have a solid setting and in a creative process it's not that solid except maybe a rule at the beginning certain things to limit to forbid something or to introduce a game rule and then to adapt to the feedback system or to change. I personally am often surprised by the creativity that limits are. That's also the case with this paper exercise you don't have to use the scissors. I have to think about it first what else is there. Sometimes the limits are it's not so much time it's not so much money we don't have everything we need what else can we do to bring it over I think that's also very exciting the topic of limits we find in the building house I think this building community belongs to the most intense experiences so all the building houses and building houses will say later how we are there together and this feeling in this community it was a very strong community and my thesis would be they did a lot together although there was a meeting in Weimar they went to construction sites they did a lot together and the course contributed to bringing people together to work together maybe not together on a paper but everyone had the same task and that you can exchange I can imagine it you heard what today's mayor said that you understood that okay, let's do that together somehow I understand that's how I imagine it and this incomprehensible when you ask did the building house have a teaching method or a teaching method I would say no there are also very unique art personalities this for example the pedagogical sketchbook by Herrn Cle is a very nice poetic, a very very nice poetic text but on the other hand I understand that we want it is also very very unique and literary and it has this artistic transition and is not in that sense a scientific method behind it Johannes Ithen had a prior knowledge of the pedagogy but that wasn't that wasn't a pedagogy Johannes Ithen taught at private schools if I remember correctly and that's something different than today where you would also say okay, what is a pedagogical concept of the footsteps of psychological knowledge and other studies but we're talking about art here and about a art school that has tried to go new ways and especially there to break boundaries and not to fix it but to always think again so to speak and that's probably the highest art that you can see yourself and really with curiosity the things that are in the other the question of their own to promote and not small Gropius, Itens, Cleis Grunos to produce Dear Nina, thank you very much That was a wonderful walk through the eternal Earth of the building house as you said before the teaching and instructions of the lecture if the focus was successfully absolved you could then choose a training workshop and start with the work but we're here today for the first time at the end inspired by your Instagram comments we thought about that you might also want to see the pictures and photos that we always talk about here that's why you can today look at a few of these photos on the Facebook and Instagram channels of the building house archive next time we don't want to work at the building house but rather take a look at the free time of the builders and builders a very special kind of free time namely the celebration of festivals parties at the building house that's in the next episode of our theme with Erika Barber, photographer and employee at the building house archive I then talk about the faith at the noise, party shots and utopia for one night that was about the building house the podcast of the building house archive building house archive subscribe to our podcast on Amazon Music Spotify, Apple Podcast Deezer and everywhere where there are podcasts about the building house a production of the building house archive building house archive, building house archive and the one on the ears