Bauhaus stairs

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Bauhaus stairs (Bauhaus Stairway) (Oskar Schlemmer)
Bauhaustreppe
( Bauhaus Stairway )
Oskar Schlemmer , 1932
Oil on canvas
162.3 x 114.3 cm
Museum of Modern Art , New York

Bauhaus Staircase is the title of a painting by Oskar Schlemmer from 1932. It was created as a protest against the closing of the Bauhaus on September 30, 1932 , ordered by the National Socialist majority in Dessau's municipal council. The picture is Schlemmer's main pictorial work and belongs to the era of classical modernism . In 1933 Philip Johnson and Alfred Barr bought it for the collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art . Before that, the artist had to witness how some of his murals were painted over in 1930 at the instigation of Paul Schultze-Naumburg or the figural frescoes on the walls of the workshop building of the Bauhaus in Weimar were knocked off as " degenerate art ".

Description and background

The photo with the class from the Bauhaus weaving workshop on the stairs is attributed to Oskar Schlemmer by Wulf Herzogenrath (2019) and is dated 1927/28.

The picture shows several stylized, geometrically modeled people climbing a staircase, two people, one full-size, of the other only the left arm can be seen on the railing, descending. In the center of the picture there are three back figures, the middle one with a bright red waisted jacket. In the foreground, cropped, on both sides are two figures entering the picture, shown in profile. The figures in the background further up on the stairs are scaled down so that there is an upward flow of movement. A total of six of these artificial figures strive upwards, they are dominant, while two strive downwards, whereby the figure on the left at the window, apparently a young man, appears to be floating on the landing and prancing with the tip of his right foot. The art historian Karin von Maur recognizes in this apparently young man a pictorial element of Schlemmer that appears frequently in his interiors, an allusion to Schlemmer's activities on the subject of Bauhaus dance . The face of another person in profile appears in the background at the top right behind the grid of a stairwell window, with whom the central figure in the red jacket makes eye contact. The stairwell is expanded to the outside and the interior becomes an “imaginary continuation of the real space”. Karin von Maur writes: "The clearly structured, threefold deep exploration from reality (viewer space) through fiction (image space) to transcendence (indefinite behind, bright space that arouses curiosity) characterizes Schlemmer's painting of the Bauhaus era." The staircase in the Dessau Bauhaus can be seen as a homage to the architect Walter Gropius . Like the architecture of the building, Schlemmer's picture also conveys the modern lighting of the clear architecture by means of the typical ribbon-like window strips in a clear composition. Here the Bauhaus idea is condensed in one picture.

Oskar Schlemmer had not worked at the Bauhaus in Dessau since June 1929, but he remained connected to him. Oskar Moll appointed him as a lecturer at the State Academy for Arts and Crafts in Breslau , which was closed in 1932 due to a financial crisis. The news of the imminent closure of the Bauhaus reached Schlemmer on July 28, 1932. Shaken, he protested in his own way and decided to paint this picture to support it. However, the motif of a staircase was already present in his work. What was new, on the other hand, was the specific site-specific title Bauhaus stairs , because Schlemmer otherwise always chose the most neutral possible formulations for his works. The inspiration for the stair motif was probably a photograph by Theodore Lux Feininger from 1927, which shows the students of the weaving mill in the Dessau stairwell. In the photo, the bent arms, which Schlemmer often appear, can already be seen to some extent. However, Wulf Herzogenrath attributes the photo to Schlemmer. There is also a pencil drawing by him from 1928, which already outlines the central group of three figures in the painting, as well as a detailed watercolor from 1931 in light colors.

Staircase in the Dessau Bauhaus

Meaning and interpretation

In the picture Bauhaus stairs as a “condensation of the idea of ​​the Bauhaus” (Karin von Maur), Oskar Schlemmer contrasts the actually existing modern building in Dessau with an idealized artistic reality. Everything stands in a “harmony” that can be seen as a symbol of youthful aspiration. The way should lead to a “brighter future”. It is the utopia of the continuation of the Bauhaus idea about the darkness of the emerging National Socialism that the artist immortalized in his picture. In the time of crisis of cultural disintegration in political and economic terms and the fear of chaos led to his motif of the stairs, which he sketched, drew and painted in many of his works at that time. The Bauhaus staircase with its railing should therefore be understood as a symbol of support and stability in difficult times. Schlemmer's artistic theories about "measure and law", "freedom in law" and the "flow of the unconscious", which as a feeling leads to a "free, unbound creation without the aid of measure and measurement and can condense the image down to the last form," come into their own particularly well in this painting.

exhibition

The painting as a stamp motif from 1975

In Germany, the picture was only shown in Berlin by Paul Cassirer and Alfred Flechtheim in an exhibition entitled Lebendige Deutsche Kunst . In Württembergische Kunstverein Stuttgart a retrospective of works by Oskar Schlemmer was opened on September 1 1932nd On March 12, 1933, under pressure from the National Socialists, it was closed again and was no longer accessible to the public. The art historian Alfred Barr came to Stuttgart at the beginning of April 1933 and was able to visit the exhibition, which was only open to acquaintances and serious interested parties by prior arrangement. He was looking for works for the Museum of Modern Art, which had just been founded in New York at the time . In a note he wrote: “Stuttgart. Schlemmer exhibition closed - I missed the opening, but was able to enter later with a special permit for strangers. I was so angry that I telegraphed Philip Johnson to buy the most important paintings in the exhibition just to annoy these sons of bitches. "The American architect Philip Johnson did not pay Schlemmer the price he had hoped for for his" perhaps best picture "(Schlemmer) , but the artist was happy that a worthy museum should receive the picture.

After the Second World War, the painting was first shown in documenta 1 in 1955 in Europe and, according to art historian Gerda Breuer, contributed to the rehabilitation of the ostracized artist Oskar Schlemmer in Germany. From October 21, 2014 to April 19, 2015 the Bauhaus staircase was on view in the exhibition Visions of a New World in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart .

literature

  • Jonathan Jones: The Bauhaus Stairway, Oskar Schlemmer (1932) . In: The Guardian . October 12, 2002, ISSN  0261-3077 (English, theguardian.com ).
  • Andreas Huyssen: Oskar Schlemmer: Bauhaus stairway, 1932 . In: Barry Bergdoll, Leah Dickerman (eds.): Bauhaus 1919–1933. Workshops for Modernity. The Museum of Modern Art, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-87070-758-2 , pp. 319–321 (English, books.google.de - excerpt).
  • John-Paul Stonard: Oskar Schlemmer's ' Bauhaus stairs', 1932. In: The Burlington Magazine . tape 151 , no. 1276 , 2009, ISSN  0007-6287 , p. 456-464 , JSTOR : 40480258 (English, part 1).
  • John-Paul Stonard: Oskar Schlemmer's ' Bauhaus stairs', 1932. In: Benedict Nicolson (Ed.): The Burlington Magazine . tape 152 , no. 1290 , 2010, ISSN  0007-6287 , p. 595-602 , JSTOR : 25769749 (English, part 2).
  • Ina Conzen: Oskar Schlemmer: Visions of a new world . Ed .: Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. 1st edition. Hirmer, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-7774-2303-6 (exhibition catalog).
  • Wulf Herzogenrath : Overcoming heaviness. The Bauhaus stairs - on the history of an image and an era , in: Wulf Herzogenrath: The Bauhaus does not exist . Berlin: Alexander, 2019 ISBN 978-3-89581-494-5 , pp. 69-77

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wulf Herzogenrath : Beacon of a new time. The destruction of Oskar Schlemmer's “Bauhaus frescoes” in 1930. In: Uwe Fleckner (Ed.): The ostracized masterpiece. The fate of modern art in the “Third Reich” . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-05-004360-9 , pp. 245-257 ( books.google.de - reading excerpt).
  2. ↑ Feininger's photo of Gunta Stölzl's weaver class on the Bauhaus stairs
  3. ↑ Wulf Herzogenrath: Overcoming the heaviness. The Bauhaus staircase - to the history of an image and an era. In: The Bauhaus does not exist. Alexander Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-89581-494-5 , p. 69 ff.
  4. ↑ a b Karin von Maur: Art figures climb into spaces of the future . In: Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (ed.): Bauhaus . No. January 6 , 2014, ISSN  2191-5105 ( bauhaus-dessau.de ).
  5. ^ Oskar Schlemmer: Opening lecture in the Schlesisches Museum Breslau for the exhibition of his Folkwang murals on October 26, 1930. In: Wulf Herzogenrath: Oskar Schlemmer. The wall design of the new architecture, Prestel-Verlag, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-7913-0033-4 , p. 180
  6. ↑ Karin von Maur: Oskar Schlemmer. The Folkwang cycle. Painting around 1930 Exhibition catalog, Verlag Gerd Hatje, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-7757-0464-7 , p. 165
  7. ↑ Karin von Maur: Oskar Schlemmer. The painter ... Prestel-Verlag, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7913-0588-3 , p. 32 f.
  8. ↑ Bauhaus Archive (ed.): Model bauhaus. (based on the Barr Papers 1933 ), Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2009, ISBN 978-3-7757-2414-2 , p. 314
  9. ^ Oskar Schlemmer. Bauhaus stairway. 1932. The Museum of Modern Art , accessed on January 24, 2019 (English, image description at MoMA).
  10. ^ Gerda Breuer in: Bauhaus 6. The magazine of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. Dessau 2014, ISBN 978-3-944669-13-7 , p. 67 ff.
  11. ^ Staatsgalerie - »Bauhaus stairs« by Oskar Schlemmer. altertuemliches.at, 2014, accessed on January 24, 2019 .
  12. ^ Nikolai B. Forstbauer: Oskar Schlemmer - State Gallery: Lines in the Present . In: Stuttgarter Nachrichten . November 21, 2014 ( stuttgarter-nachrichten.de - With photo gallery).