Would you like a hi-res version of this?

It's a magazine cover by Herbert Bayer, taken from
N Macmillan's recent "An A-Z of Type Designers".
That book also has an image of a The Foundry font
based on Bayer's work, but if you're interested in
that it might be better to get a clean imaging of it
directly from The Foundry.

hhp

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ralf_herrmann/sets/72157600304165115/

Hires versions on request.

Ralf

Hrant: Hell yes, I think I can use it. If it's not too much trouble and thanks for the info about The Foundry.
Thanks a lot Ralf. Brilliant. The ones on your link should be good enough.

And feel free to discuss and post anecdotes, ideas etc. on the subject here!
Thank you. thank you, thank you.

Around about the time cubism began playing itself out on the canvases of Picasso, Duchamp, Leger, Braque, et. al, came a new understanding throughout the art community which I believe was brought on by 'the machine'. Painting began to be identified with its two-dimensional support. No longer was it the external world, but the internal logic of the painting which began to dictate form. Surface organization gained over all representational depth. The compositional systems of academic painting were being deconstructed and then reconstructed as - Frontality.

Also, traditionaly speaking, form and space were talked about in terms of mass and volume, conventional techniques whether it be architecture, sculpture, painting, graphics or type etc., where forms which occupied a certain volume and suggested a certain weight. Form and space were talked about in terms of opposites, or as positive and negative. Space was only implied and measured by its displacement. Some works which seemed "lighter" than others indicated that mass was still the standard of referenece and space remained peripheral.

Inspired by the constructivists (and and to a certain extent the ideas of futurism), Bauhaus made space the essential basis of their art, whether it be in architecture, sculpture, painting, graphics, or type, etc.,, Bauhaus considered works produced by conventional methods, no matter how stylized, to be naturalistic, static, and subjective, because it reflected personal feeling. Bauhaus is the influence of modern physics and geometry and the machine, and not the visualization of science.

But just prior to Bauhaus, guys like Mondrian and Matisse were to have an enormous influence on Herr Gropius, Itten and Le Corbu too for that matter. Colour and texture were now elements of specific information, indications that 'spoke' for themselves. Colour acquired its independence and autonomized line. The artist now drew on the coloured areas, the line - graffti - freed from the constraints of the effect of reality, developed according to its autonomous rhythm.

This is when Bayer, Moholy-Nagy, Klee, amoungst many others, really came into their own. Bayer's painting 'Alphabet' of 1927 comes to mind - but then so too does the whole of Itten's method of teaching - the teaching of opposites. Other examples - Picasso's 'Man in the Hat' of 1912, Klee's 'The Vocal Fabric of the Singer Rosa Silber' of 1922, and Mohonly-Nagy's sculpture 'Space Modulartor' of 1940, all on the heels of Frontalism. I think Frontalism and to a certain extent constructivism and futurism, shaped guys like Itten and Bayer et. al, and all that they were to produce - except for Mohonly-Nagy who I think was just a wonderer. But it was Herr Gropius and Le Corbusier too, that were to be totally consumed by 'the machine'.

I'm beginning to ramble... need more wine... ahhh, that's better!

I'm really interested to see how you peg Bayer to Bauhaus and Herr Gropius and his want of 'the machine'.

Gropius was just a punk - looking for the funk.

Okay, ok, I've said enough...

_________
Hiro

have more wine, Hiro. I admit I've never been particularly fascinated by Bauhaus in general but now that I have to prepare this little talk I find myself reading books on bauhaus history like a thriller, there's everything: politics, international intrigue, back-stabbing and I've also rediscovered Moholy-Nagy, I guess one of the most interesting characters in the Bauhaus. There's a brilliant article in the Guardian (2006 I think) where the author tells how he was snobbed in England London Transport's design impresario Frank Pick expressed a widely held artistic xenophobia in dismissing Moholy-Nagy as "a gentleman with a modernistic tendency who produces pastiches of photographs of a surrealistic type, and I am not at all clear why we should fall for this. It is international, or at least continental. Let us leave the continent to pursue their own tricks" and how they regret it now.
Anyway, mine is going to be a panoramic of Bauhaus graphic production, the Bauhaus Books, portfolios etc.
By the way, Ralf your photos are awesome but I have a question if you're there, the photo of a publication called Utopia- Dokumente der Wirklichkeit you posted [by Oskar Schlemmer], what is that about exactly? Thanks.

what is that about exactly?

Utopia. Dokumente der Wirklichkeit, Editor: Bruno Adler, publishing house Utopia-Verlag Weimar 1921

Thanks, I meant the content but don't worry: strike is over and my talk has been postponed to July. Phweeee...but if you guys still have rare, good quality images, I'd be thrilled to hear from you. Thanks again.