Bauhaus Exibition comments

I wanted to go to this, but it was pretty pricey and exhibitions are usually really boring. But I will have a look at those reviews shortly…

yep this type of exhibition is usually pretty shit. I used to be able to go for free through work so I've seen far to many.

What might be interesting in this case though is to see how the school developed. Many don't know about the early Weimar stuff and how it was more experimental and had broader scope politically, socially and artistically. Not quite as geared towards capitalist production.

The text at internationalism muddles a few things. The International Style is a very specific "manufactured" concept with specific rules created by Philip Johnson who was a mediocre and unprincipled architect with political/pr skills. He coined the term in something like 1935 so using it as a synonym to modernism or bauhaus is not very accurate.

The ideas of honesty to construction and materials is also overstated in the icc article. For instance concrete was a bit expensive and advanced so brick was rendered to look like concrete much like the russian constructivists mentioned in the article that made timber look like steel. Modern architecture was full of fakery and ornament (if industrial ornament). In fact early postmodernism was a critique of this lack of rationality. VSBA used the example of the Duck and the Decorated Shed to critique how in much modern architecture form didn't follow function. But form was representing the function in a expensive and irrational manner much better resolved by building simple buildings with huge signs och stuck on ornament. The logic is sound but the results are terrifying...

It looks like I'll be jailing minds the coming year so I had to practice

Philip Johnson was something of a fascist IIRC.

I went. Didn't like a lot of it, but came out with a new appreciation for Paul Klee. I don't know much about art, but it seemed to me that he was pretty different from the rest of the group.

Also there was some architectural drawings at the end with some hellish writings underneath about workers having finely tuned and measured apartments so they could enjoy rations of work and pleasure in equal measure.