This symposium marks the centennial of the founding of the legendary Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany in 1919. Particular focus will be on the legacy of Josef and Anni Albers, which looms large at Yale. The two-day event brings together art and architectural historians, artists, curators, and educators using various tools and presentation formats, including scholarship, film, performance, and painting, to investigate the history and legacy of the short-lived institution and its key members.
The title of the symposium hints at the overarching ethos: the Bauhaus prompts us to get out of our disciplinary silos. One of the goals is to rethink the role of architecture at the famed school; after all, while architecture was conceived as an ultimate synthesis of the arts, it was a late addition to the curriculum. Therefore, rather than recalling the few buildings and architects associated with the school at various times, the symposium uses the Bauhaus as an opportunity to think of architecture in an extended field, a beneficiary of transfers of knowledge and techniques from various other artistic fields and disciplines.
6:30 p.m.
Dietrich Neumann, Brown University
The Bauhaus: Complexities and Contradictions at Modernism’s Foremost Art School
2:30 p.m.
Graduate student symposium organized by Henry Balme and Shira Miron
Bryson Tedford, (Columbia University): “Exhibiting Reflective Space: the Spatialization of Literary Form at the Bauhaus Exhibition in Paris 1930”
Sandra Neugärtner, (University of Erfurt): “Lena Meyer-Bergner’s Conception of Modernity between Graphics and Weaving, between Folk Art and Technology”
Jungmin Lee, Harvard University: “Plasticity, Light, and Perception in The Bauhaus Transmedial Performance”
Julia Medina, (Princeton University): “Our Play, Our Party, Our Work: Jazz and the Bauhaus”
5 p.m.
Gallery tour with student curators of the Bauhaus@100 exhibition curated by Emily Cass, Louis Koushouris, Rachel Mulder, and Maya Sorabjee.
6:30 p.m.
Judith Raum, Artist
Anni and the Feline: Performative Investigations
9 a.m.
Introductions
Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, Yale University
9:10 a.m.
Pedagogy
Moderator: Surry Schlabs, Yale University
Brenda Danilowitz, Albers Foundation: “What was the Vorkurs?”
Zeynep Çelik Alexander, Columbia University: “Bauhaus Equipment”
Craig Buckley, Yale University: “Is the Bauhaus Relevant Today?”
10:40 a.m.
Medium
Moderator: Kevin Repp, Yale University
Wallis Miller, University of Kentucky: “Minor Typographical Masterpiece”
Oliver Botar, University of Manitoba: “Laszló Moholy-Nagy’s Projection Spaces”
Jeffrey Saletnik, Indiana University: “Anni Albers’s Silence”
12:10 p.m.
Drawing Demonstration
Alec Purves, Yale University
1:30 p.m.
Technic
Moderator: Kirk Wetters, Yale University
Sarah Meister, Museum of Modern Art: “Building with Images: Josef Albers’s Photocollages”
Spyros Papapetros, Princeton University: “Territorial Technologies in and Around the Bauhaus: Geo-Psychology and Geopolitics in Siegfried Ebeling’s Space as Membrane”
Nicola Suthor, Yale University: “Moving Lines: Johannes Itten’s Bauhaus Vorkurs and its Impact on the Concept of Drawing”
3:00 p.m.
My Bauhaus
Moderator: Trattie Davies, Yale University
Anoka Faruqee, Yale University
Katie Dixon, Powerhouse Arts
Enrique Ramirez and Blake Marques Carrington, Yale University/Pratt Institute
4:00 p.m.
Closing Remarks
Fatima Naqvi, Yale University
5 p.m.
Closing reception