Suchergebnisse

This essay examines early twentieth-century German representations of men and women in uniform to consider how mass culture allowed individuals to participate in aspects of gender construction. It also reveals how masculinity was increasingly linked to military ideals. The pictures under scrutiny here were made in two significant but as yet under-researched types of pictures: pre-avant-garde photomontaged soldier portraits and popular postcards. Both of these visual forms originated in the 1870s, the decade that Germany was itself founded, and they both were in wide circulation by the early twentieth century. Individualized soldier portraits and postcards offered a glorious vision of a man's military service, and they performed what Theodor Lessing has called Vergemütlichung, the rendering harmless of history. These idealized images of soldierly life were available to a broad swath of the public, but their democratization only extended so far. Representations of women in uniform served to reinforce—through stereotyping and humor—the unquestionably male nature of military institutions and, by extension, of public space. At the same time, by making apparent their own constructed nature, these portraits and postcards offered viewers a glimpse behind the masquerade of masculinity. This essay thus also identifies these images' links to the subsequent work of avant-garde artists and to the National Socialists' return to the ideal of uniformed masculinity.

The Bauhaus (1919–1933) is widely regarded as the twentieth century's most influential art, architecture, and design school, celebrated as the archetypal movement of rational modernism and famous for bringing functional and elegant design to the masses. In Haunted Bauhaus, art historian Elizabeth Otto liberates Bauhaus history, uncovering a movement that is vastly more diverse and paradoxical than previously assumed. Otto traces the surprising trajectories of the school's engagement with occult spirituality, gender fluidity, queer identities, and radical politics. The Bauhaus, she shows us, is haunted by these untold stories.

Cover page -- Halftitle page -- Series page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Contents -- Images -- Introduction: Embodying the Bauhaus -- Bauhaus Basics -- Gender, Sexuality, and the Body in the Weimar Republic -- Bauhaus Bodies -- Notes -- Part I The Bauhaus in Weimar and Beyond: Gendered Bodies and the Search for Utopia -- 1 Soft Skills and Hard Facts: A Systematic Assessment of the Inclusion of Women at the Bauhaus -- The Bauhaus Student Body: A Formal Description -- Female Students at the Bauhaus: Statistical Approaches -- Work-Life Balance: Couples at the Bauhaus -- Two Couples at the Bauhaus -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 2 "Bodies Drilled in Freedom": Nudity, Body Culture, and Classical Gymnasticst the Early Bauhaus -- Notes -- 3 The Spiritual Enhancement of the Body: Johannes Itten, Gertrud Grunow, and Mazdaznan at the Early Bauhaus -- Itten's Bauhaus Preliminary Course: Exercises against Arrhythmia -- Grunow's Praktische Harmonisierungslehre -- The Relationship of Body, Mind, and Spirit in Itten's Pedagogy -- Mazdaznan and Ideas of the Racialized Body at the Bauhaus -- Grunow's Position in Relation to Itten and Mazdaznan -- Notes -- 4 Utopias of a New Society: Lucia Moholy, László Moholy-Nagy, and the Loheland and Schwarzerden Women's Communes -- Notes -- 5 Invisible Bodies and Empty Spaces: Notes on Gender at the 1923 Bauhaus Exhibition -- Body Problems -- Presenting the Bauhaus, 1923 -- Empty Workshops -- Banished Sculptures -- Original Sin -- Visible Bodies -- Notes -- Part II A New Unity? Technologies and Techniques of Gender -- 6 Clothing Bauhaus Bodies -- Modern Bauhaus Dress -- Unisex Professionalism and Reform Dress -- Beyond Fashion -- Notes -- 7 Paul Klee and the New Woman Dancer: Gret Palucca, Karla Grosch, and the Gendering of Constructivism -- Notes -- 8 Ise Gropius: "Everyone Here Calls me Frau Bauhaus" -- The Diary (1924-8)

Verlagsinfo: A century after the Bauhaus's founding in 1919, this book reassesses it as more than a highly influential art, architecture, and design school. In myriad ways, emerging ideas about the body in relation to health, movement, gender, and sexuality were at the heart of art and life at the school. Bauhaus Bodies reassesses the work of both well-known Bauhaus members and those who have unjustifiably escaped scholarly scrutiny, its women in particular. In fourteen original, cutting-edge essays by established experts and emerging scholars, this book reveals how Bauhaus artists challenged traditional ideas about bodies and gender. Written to appeal to students, scholars, and the broad public, Bauhaus Bodies will be essential reading for anyone interested in modern art, architecture, design history, and gender studies; it will define conversations and debates during the 2019 centenary of the Bauhaus's founding and beyond.