The Legacy of fauvism at Bauhaus of Walter Gropius
The fauvism influences exerted significance even without being characterized as a structured art movement. The article discusses the impact of fauvism, mainly ideological, on the Bauhaus school, noting the apparent considerations of Walter Gropius. The connection was established between the critical eye of reality because of the realism in this fauvism emphasized Gropius at the Bauhaus.
Key words: Fauvism, Bauhaus, Walter Gropius
At the beginning of the 20th century, many social transformations took places, such as questioning authoritarianism, oligarchic collapse, formation of democratic ideals, and the struggle for freedom of expression and citizenship. Concurrent with these factors, new conceptions were developed that extended the most stable convictions, leading to scientific advancement and changes that revolutionized the way of expressing art, culminating in the establishment of Fauvism.
The opposition of Fauvism art to the faithful representation of the visualized reality marks a rebellious uprising to the established model of art as pure craftsmanship. According to Agra (2004), this new and pioneering Fauvist stance towards art and crafts would in the future also be assumed by Dadaism.
Fauvism represented a brief, intense and vital artistic period, contextualized and generated as a result of a historical period in which political and social demonstrations took place, amid strikes, with the engagement of youth eager for independence and changes in reality, in a struggle for dominating it or abstract from it. These aspects were transferred to the fauces posture, which assumed, therefore, the character of a singular ideological manifesto in art, which was a rupture with paradigms and the dividing mark in the way of conceiving art.
Fauvism did not establish itself as a structured artistic movement. However, it significantly influenced what happened in art later, affecting the rupture between modern and ancient art and colors in contemporary art. Whitfield (2000) reports that Apollinaire describes Fauvism as introducing Cubism and that Braque considered Fauvism a transitional period. Second Agra (2004), the creative freedom of Fauvism greatly impacted Germany.
To investigate the influences exerted by Fauvism, the study establishes a connection between the aforementioned artistic period and the Bauhaus school, observing the considerations in Walter Gropius’ manifesto from 1919.
The Fauvism Art
Fauvist art does not reside only in the innovative way of projecting painting; it is revealed in a mimicked way the manifestation of transcendent transformations in art as conceived at the time. In this way, fauve painting pictorially represents the manifestation of freedom of expression of feelings and ideas, of the particular course of sense and perceiving the world, in a way that does not consider art as a craft, simple care or vanity for the ability to reproduce images the real world. Therefore, in the exaggerated design, exaltation of pure colors, and distorted lines, the personal intensity of the artist who expresses his sentimental, social, intellectual, and ideological experiences about real and desired situations and conditions is deposited.
With the industrial revolution, a new lifestyle was developed, with a faster and more dynamic pace, in which information arrived in greater quantity and speed, sharpening the sensation and perception of artists, stimulating a more rational behavior in the observation of the natural world and the free course of interior impulses in painting.
In this new way of living and perceiving the world, painters adept at Fauvism characteristically opposed models, authorities, and conservatism of any kind, social, political, or artistic.
The desire for freedom and artistic euphoria was striking in the behavior of the Fauves, as well as the experimentation and commitment to transmit deep sensations. Even with such striking characteristics, Fauvism did not establish itself as an artistic movement; it did not represent an organized school, which is perhaps excessive greed for freedom.
Whitfield (2000) states that Fauvism was transitory and barely definable and that Van Dongen, a Fauve artist, denied the existence of any doctrine among them. According to Chipp (1999), fauvism artists never developed a coherent art theory or an artistic program.
Walter Gropius’ Manifesto
In 1919 Walter Gropius published the manifesto that would be the north of the Bauhaus school. Gropius begins the text with an excerpt that summarizes the primary thought for the institution at that first moment.
The ultimate end of all plastic activity is construction. Adorning it was, in the past, the noblest task of the plastic arts, inseparable components of great architecture. Today, they find themselves in a situation of singular self-sufficiency, from which they will only free themselves through the conscious joint and coordinated action of all professionals. Architects, painters, and sculptors must again come to know and understand the multiform structure of the building as a whole and without its parts; only then will his works again be full of the architectural spirit lost in salon art. (GROPIUS, 1919). This statement makes it possible to previously understand the school director's path to disseminate knowledge in the Bauhaus.
Walter Gropius criticized the state of the art that put itself in self-sufficiency, and that did not include other areas of construction aimed at a whole; he intended to clarify that the project should not only embrace the parts of its composition singularly but also is considered from the beginning thinking about the final state. The plastic arts play an adorning aspect of the absolute conception and enter the project from its initial structure.
Continuing in his manifesto, the same declares, “Architects, sculptors, painters, we must all return to handicrafts, as there is no such thing as “art by profession.” The criticism here refers to salon art, already mentioned above, which figures the artist’s detachment from the work’s social objectivity.
Gropius also says that the artist is the elevation of the artisan, the divine grace that unconsciously makes flowers of art bloom. With that, Gropius believed that skills should be preserved, the “knowing how to do” field, and achieving excellence. In this way, art does not stick only to its “divine” state but would be guaranteed and assured as a factor to achieve results of magnitude.
Concluding the manifesto, Gropius writes: “Let us, therefore, form a new guild of artisans, without the exclusivist arrogance that created a wall of pride among artisans, without the exclusivist arrogance that it created a wall of pride between artisans and artists. Let us wish, invent, create, together, the new construction of the future, which will bundle everything together in a single form”. It is the manifestation of his desire to unite architecture, sculpture, and painting in the holistic state of the work, having control over all aspects of the architectural design.
One of the principles of the Bauhaus was that art was above any method and therefore could not be taught, but the craft could be taught.
The Influence of Fauvism on Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus
As seen earlier, Fauvism brought a break in Impressionist thinking and raised the art to a new consciousness. Discussing this awareness, which novice artists incorporated in their works, it will be presented how Fauvism influenced Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus through the analysis of the 1919 manifesto, drawing a parallel to novice ideas from the beginning of the 20th century.
In the book Arte Moderna by Giulio Carlo Argan (1992), the author comments that the group of Fauves is not homogeneous and does not have a defined program, other than to oppose the hedonistic decorative of Art Nouveau to the formal inconsistency, to the spiritualist evasion of the Symbolism. At this point, the correlation with Gropius’ thought on the use of plastic arts as an only adornment is inevitable. Another point to note is the Fauvism criticism of the so-called spiritualist evasion of symbolism in what Gropius feels like a lack of the architectural spirit that was lost in the art of the salon. Both fall into the problem of the absence of the symbolic structure.
Still, according to ARGAN (1992), the Fauves did not have an ideological flag; their social polemics is implicit in their poetics. In this sense, it is not possible to establish a comparison of a formalized manifesto. However, the novices left with the legacy the influence of artistic thought that somehow contributed to the Bauhaus school. In Walter Gropius’ speech, he considered construction the ultimate end of the plastic activity. In the same direction Henri Matisse, felt the most outstanding representative of Fauvism, worked on color research as plastic research, on the constructive or bearer possibilities of color. Once again, the thought around the structuring/construction of the work unites their opinions.
In her book, Commented Art — from Prehistory to Postmodern (1999), Carol Strickland says that novices became increasingly interested in Cézanne’s emphasis on infrastructure, which gave rise to the next revolution: Cubism. Still, on structural studies, Strickland (1999) emphasizes that Matisse continued to explore the potential of pure love as he reduced forms to their most clear signs. This fauvist characteristic of exploring the composition of the painting through color, reducing its gradient, is a striking feature that we see in Gropius’ Bauhaus, who redid the shapes and worked them just as Matisse worked his pure colors. that is, the pure composition related to the infrastructure of the work.
The artists of Fauvism collaborated with the discussion of the real, in not only representing the real but in thinking about it. Raoul Dufy (1877–1953) used intense colors that had nothing to do with the appearance of the object, but everything to do with his look at the object. (STRICKLAND. 1999).
The symbolic hypothesis of reality beyond human experience, transcendent, which can only be glimpsed in the symbol or imagined in the dream, is excluded. Hence, from there, the opposition between engaged art, which tends to have a profound impact on the historical situation, is outlined. Only the first poses the problem of the concrete relationship with society and, therefore, of communication; the second excludes it, posits itself as hermetic, or subordinates communication to the knowledge of a code belonging to a few initiates. (ARGAN, 1992).
Fauvism adjusted reality according to the intention coming from the stimulus of feeling, it wanted to appear in the painting, so realism was never lost in the works, it was only manipulated, which stimulates reflection, that is, Fauvism started from an engaged art, precisely the which was intended by Walter Gropius perceived through the reading of his manifesto.
Final considerations
This article aimed to reflect the possible contributions to the Bauhaus school inherited by Fauvism. The discussion was based on the observations made based on the 1919 Walter Gropius manifesto correlated with the Fauvism ideology that occurred at the beginning of the 20th century. It was noticed that although Fauvism has no written manifesto, precisely because it is not considered a movement, it is possible to identify a certain fauvism heritage present in Gropius’ speech, such as engaged art, the discussion of the construction of the structure, and his holistic thinking considering the parts as fundamental for the composition and not just with singular self-sufficient adornments.
Finally, a connection was established between the critical view of reality due to the Fauvism that is present in the realism emphasized in Gropius’ Bauhaus.
References
AGRA, L. História da arte do século XX: ideias e movimentos. São Paulo: ed. ANHEMBI MORUMBI,
2004. 183 p.
ARGAN, Giulio Carlo. Arte Moderna. são Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1992. 709 p.
CHIPP, H. B. Teoria da arte moderna. São Paulo, LIVRARIA MARTINS FONTES EDITORA. 1998. 675 p.
STRICKLAND, Carol. Arte Comentada: Da Pré-História ao Pós-Moderno. 3. ed Rio de Janeiro: Ediouro, 1999. 198 p.
WHITFIELD, S. Fauvismo. In: STANGOS. N. Conceitos da arte moderna. Rio de Janeiro. Jorge Zahar, 2000. P. 11–23.
