bauhaus
imaginista
Article

Shifting, Rotating, Mirroring 


Lena Bergner’s Minutes of Paul Klee’s Classes

Lena Bergner, Carpet design, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Inv. No. LM-B5/01, © Heirs after Lena Bergner.

Lena Bergner developed carpet patterns applying specific methods learned from Paul Klee discernible in her finished work. The results, however, are quite unique. This is precisely what Klee sought to achieve with his classes at the Bauhaus: to point to paths of design so that the formal language is not arbitrary, without, however, prescribing predetermined outcomes.

Lena Bergner (1906-81) studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau from 1925 to 1930. In 1929 she completed her training to become a weaver with a journeyman’s examination, and in 1930 she graduated with a Bauhaus diploma. In addition to attending the basic courses held by Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy, as well as courses by Oskar Schlemmer and Joost Schmidt, she attended Paul Klee’s form classes—compulsory for all students—and the theoretical classes he offered specifically for weavers. After her training at the Bauhaus, she became director of the Ostpreußischen Handweberei (East Prussian Hand Weaving Workshop) in Königsburg, and then followed the former director of the Bauhaus, Hannes Meyer, to Moscow in 1931, becoming active as an “engineer-artist” in the drawing department of a factory for Jacquard furniture fabrics. With the beginning of the Moscow Trials in 1936, Lena Bergner left Russia for Switzerland with Meyer, whom she married the following year. After a trip through the United States and Central America, in 1939 Bergner accepted an appointment as professor at the state-run textile institute in Mexico, accompanied by Meyer, who had been offered the directorship of the Instituto del Urbanismo y Planificación (Institute of Urbanism and Urban Planning). Until her return to Switzerland in 1949, she worked as a weaver on various projects in Mexico, some of which were, unfortunately, never completed. For example, she was commissioned by the government to develop a plan to promote hand-weaving in the region of Ixmiquilpan, allowing the local Otomí population to augment their income from agriculture with textile production. Since artistic goals were subordinate to socio-political objectives in all of Bergner’s professional activities, the skills she acquired at the Bauhaus were only intermittently expressed and hardly any of her textile work has survived.

Lena Bergner, Negative silver gelatin print with illustrations from Klee’s classes, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Inv. No. LM-B4/07N and LM-B4/02N, © Heirs after Lena Bergner.

Her minutes of the Bauhaus classes, on the other hand, bear vivid witness to what Paul Klee taught in his Theory of Configuration Form class and his other form classes within the weaving workshop. His lectures were of a purely theoretical nature.1 He did not talk about practical implementation or the materials and techniques weaving students might apply in their work: Gunta Stölzl, director of the workshop, was responsible for these issues. According to Bergner, consultations with weaving students occasionally took place outside of formal lectures, when the fabrics produced were critiqued under Klee’s direction in forums possibly modelled on discussions during the basic course.2

Lena Bergner, Clean copy of Klee’s classes, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Inv. No. LM-B 1/08, © Heirs after Lena Bergner.

Surviving minutes of the students, such as those of Bergner, allow a reconstruction of certain semesters of Klee’s theoretical classes,3 for unlike at Weimar, where his teaching was recorded in dated lectures,4 at Dessau Klee dispensed with detailed notes, creating numerous geometrical sketches with very little text instead. As Bergner reports, Klee drew these models on the blackboard, giving brief explanations: “Klee spoke very little. We copied the sketches that formed the basis for tasks that we then had to accomplish at home.”5 Due to his often very brief explanations, some students claimed to have difficulty comprehending the full meaning of his thoughts. Others, like Helene Schmidt-Nonne, described his classes as very objective and thorough. Over time, he adapted the themes of his lectures to the given circumstances.6 Since he taught students at different levels in 1928 and 1929,7 the lectures and tasks for the basic courses overlapped with those of the theoretical classes for the weaving workshop.

In his teachings, as summed up by Bergner, Klee dealt with the laws of the surface as such, and with the relations between forms and colors. But how is this to be understood? There are more than 3,900 teaching notes written by Klee, which have been available online as facsimiles and transcripts since 2013,8 providing information on Klee’s aesthetic theory. Bergner’s minutes and exercises, included in the archive of the Zentrum Paul Klee, do so as well.

Klee’s theory begins with a general part, where he explains the principal order (I.2) of the pictorial elements: point, line and surface, as well as the pictorial means: line, black-and-white and color. As opposed to the calm principle order, the pictorial elements and means are set in motion by the special order (I.3). Klee’s theory is based on the idea of a lively, thus interesting, composition that can only be created through movement. According to Klee, movement can take place based on various methods such as shifting, mirroring, rotating or superimposing. Particularly in chapter I.4 Structure, Klee describes various methods with which a surface can be rendered rhythmical. In his classes, he wanted to demonstrate to his students how surface could be structured and new forms developed through the work process.

Lena Bergner, Exercise on shifting, mirroring and rotating, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Inv. No. LM-B6/13, © Heirs after Lena Bergner.

Klee’s second, quite extensive chapter is dedicated to the configuration of the surface, or so-called planimetric design. It mainly consists of geometric drawings. In the first subchapter (II.5 Paths to Form), Klee describes the paths through which the elementary forms of circle, triangle and square are created, with movement and tension playing prominent roles in the process. He then proceeds to analyze the internal construction of the elementary forms (see the notes for II.6 Elementary Form with Bergner’s illustrations, e.g. the interior schematic depiction of the triangle in II.6/132).

In the following chapters, Klee goes through the different possible combinations of the elementary forms—including composite forms, added or subtracted forms, or the nestling of forms. Finally, Klee shows how to develop irregular forms based on elementary forms by selecting and emphasizing construction lines within the circle, triangle and square: for example (II.11 Deviation on the Basis of the Standard). Klee’s intention is always to focus on generating forms through the path of construction rather than one’s imagination. It is therefore hardly surprising that Bergner sums up Klee’s classes with the following words: “For us weavers, his elaborations were extremely important, because they helped us overcome excessive playfulness in our designs [in order to] … create stricter compositions. On account of his often all too brief explanations, we occasionally had problems grasping the full meaning of his thoughts, which dawned upon us only later during our practical professional work.”9

Bergner’s minutes more or less correspond with Klee’s teaching notes. The material can be divided into four mixed lots: 1. Transcripts in pencil and colored pencil created during the classes (Inv. No. PN LM B3); 2. clean copies in ink with illustrations in pencil (Inv. No. PN LM B1); 3. meticulously executed exercises and color studies (Inv. No. PN LM B2, B5, B6); 4. negative silver gelatin print with illustrations from the classes (Inv. No. PN LM B4); and 5. a typescript of several notes with an English translation along with illustrations (PN LM B7). This compilation was probably made for a planned English publication, which, however, never appeared. In 1978 a selection of the aforementioned sheets was printed in Bergner’s essay ‘Unterricht bei Klee’ in the periodical form+zweck.10

Lena Bergner, Transcript of Klee’s classes, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Inv. No. LM-B 3/08, © Heirs after Lena Bergner.

Lena Bergner, Carpet design, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Inv. No. LM-B5/01, © Heirs after Lena Bergner.

For Klee, the production of forms in pictorial configuration was of paramount importance. For this reason, from 1923 onwards he elected to change the title of his lecture notes from “Theory of Pictorial Form” (bildnerische Formlehre) to “Theory of Pictorial Configuration” (bildnerische Gestaltungslehre). In his opinion, the term “Theory of Configuration” (Gestaltungslehre) better characterized the processuality of the form-making process better than the term “theory of form.”11

In order to achieve a vivid, i.e. interesting, surface configuration, Klee introduced various types of movement. In chapter I.3 Special Order, for example, he presents the geometric methods of rotating, shifting and mirroring. This theme can be found in both Bergner’s notes and Klee’s manuscripts (see BG I.3/73). In exercises, the students freely implemented what they had learned in the lectures. Klee always made an effort to understand his students’ intentions, making brief suggestions and encouraging them to further develop their ideas. Solutions for the tasks he posed were never predetermined. At the end of one lecture series, he allegedly said: ‘This is one possibility—I don’t make use of it, by the way.’12 Bergner’s collection also includes various outcomes to exercises in which rotating, shifting and mirroring as types of movement are implemented in various ways—through rhythmically linear and rhythmically planar progressions, for instance.

Lena Bergner, Exercise on shifting, mirroring and rotating, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Inv. No. LM-B6/12, © Heirs after Lena Bergner.

Shifting, mirroring and rotating are universal design principles widespread in ornamentation practices—specifically, in North African weaving art of the period. It is well-known that Klee, as well as many of his contemporaries and colleagues at the Bauhaus, was familiar with and sought to emulate non-European art and craft traditions. Both his personal library and the library of the Bauhaus reveal this shared interest in various folk cultures.13 With regards to designing textiles and carpets, engaging with premodern formal languages offered an interesting path away from the “refined imitations of stale oil paintings of dubious taste,” as Gunta Stölz described the European tradition of narrative Gobelin tapestries.14 But Klee did not consider geometric patterns as templates for finished products; instead, he would explain to his students how these patterns are created and how they can be individually altered in the creative process. Bergner, for example, also developed carpet patterns applying specific methods learned from Klee (shifting, rotating, mirroring, superimposing) discernible in her finished work. The results, however, are quite unique (Fig. 7 and 8). This is precisely what Klee sought to achieve with his classes at the Bauhaus: to point to paths of design so that the formal language is not arbitrary, without, however, prescribing predetermined outcomes.

Translation from German by Karl Hoffmann.

●Footnotes
  • 1 On Klee’s classes at the Bauhaus see Fabienne Eggelhöfer & Marianne Keller Tschirren (eds.): Paul Klee. Bauhaus Master (exhibition catalogue). La Fábrica/Fundación Juan March, Madrid, 2013.
  • 2 Lena Meyer-Bergner: ‘Unterricht bei Klee’, in: form+zweck. Fachzeitschrift für industrielle Formgestaltung, 3/1979, p. 60–62, see p. 60.
  • 3 Further information on the topics dealt with in these classes is provided by Klee’s surviving pocket calendars from the years 1926, 1928 and 1929 available in the archive of the Zentrum Paul Klee or as transcripts in: Felix Klee (ed.): Paul Klee Briefe an die Familie 1893-1940, Dumont, Cologne, 1979, Vol. 2, p. 1018–1022, 1077–1080 and 1084–1085.
  • 4 See Beiträge zur Bildnerischen Formlehre (Contributions to a Theory of Form), dated notes of chapters I.2 Principielle Ordnung (Principal Order) and II.21 Mechanik (Mechanics).
  • 5 Meyer-Bergner: ‘Unterricht bei Klee’, 1979, p. 60.
  • 6 Helene Schmidt-Nonné: ‘Der Unterricht von Paul Klee in Weimar und Dessau’, in: Paul Klee: Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch, reprint of the edition from 1925, Kupferberg, Mainz/Berlin, 1965, p. 53–56, see p. 55 f.
  • 7 He offered concurrent courses for weavers in both the second and fourth semester, alongside the compulsory classes of the basic course.
  • 8 See facsimile and transcripts at www.kleegestaltungslehre.zpk.org.
  • 9 Meyer-Bergner: ‘Unterricht bei Klee’, 1979, p. 60.
  • 10 Ibid.
  • 11 One can find the reasons given by Klee for this lexical change in: Bildnerische Gestaltungslehre, I.1. Gestaltungslehre als Begriff (Theory of Pictorial Configuration as Concept), BG I.1/4.
  • 12 Schmidt-Nonné: Der “Unterricht von Paul Klee in Weimar und Dessau,” 1965, p. 56.
  • 13 His wife Lily gave him the first edition of Carl Einstein’s seminal book Negerplastik from 1915 containing a personal dedication from Einstein. Moreover, Einstein personally gave Klee his 1921 book Afrikanische Plastik, and Klee possessed the following books from the Orbis Pictus series: Otto Burchard: Chinesische Kleinplastik, Berlin, n.y., Sattar M.A. Kheiri: Indische Miniaturen der islamischen Zeit, Berlin,n.y., and Karl With: Asiatische Monumental-Plastik, Berlin, n.y.
  • 14 Gunta Stölzl: ‘die entwicklung der bauhausweberei’, in: bauhaus. zeitschrift für gestaltung, No. 2, 5/1931.
●Author(s)
●Latest Articles
●Interview
The Bauhaus Manifesto — Conversation with Magdalena Droste

Gropius wrote his Bauhaus manifesto shortly after the end of World War I. The German empire had collapsed, Russia had undergone a revolution and a second revolution in Germany was in the process of being suppressed. Throughout Germany people felt the necessity for a social and intellectual change. → more

●Article
Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus-Manifest

Das Bauhaus wandte sich von Anfang an vom Nationalismus ab und dem Kosmopolitismus und Internationalismus zu, eine Orientierung, die es schließlich mit dem emporkommenden Nationalsozialismus in Widerspruch brachte. Die Schule korrespondierte auch mit zeitgenössischen Bildungsinitiativen in anderen Teilen der Welt, darunter die Kala Bhavan (Kunstschule) in Santiniketan, Indien. Das Bauhaus wirkte durch seine Schriften und Studierenden auch auf andere Schulen in Japan. → more

●Article
“The Art!—That’s one Thing! When it’s there” — On the History of the Arbeitsrat für Kunst in the Early Weimar Republic

Even though the progressive artists of the interwar period ultimately failed in their plan to realize the new, egalitarian society they had envisioned, their influence was lasting. The international avant-garde produced some of the most important artists of the twentieth century. Meanwhile, some members of the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Workers council for art) occupied important positions at the Bauhaus—above all, its founding director Walter Gropius. → more

●Article
Towards a Tangible Pedagogy — Dimensions of Tactility at the Bauhaus

In the epistemic context of a fundamental skepticism towards the existing knowledge system, the Bauhaus school was in pursuit of “unlearning”: dismissing conventional learning and promoting pre- linguistic, intuitive approaches- which also led to adoptions of non-academic modes of perception and included an interest in pre-modern knowledge systems. → more

●Article
Bauhaus Weimar International — Visions and Projects 1919–1925

Although the Bauhaus opened its door in 1919, it took more than three years for Gropius to fully organize the school’s faculty, since with the departure of several of the old art school’s professors, such as Max Thedy, Richard Engelmann and Walther Klemm, open positions had to be regularly filled. But Gropius’s first appointments indicated the course set toward an international avant-garde school, a school of invention. → more

●Article
Gertrud Grunow’s Theory of Harmonization — A Connection between European Reform Pedagogy and Asian Meditation?

In this essay Linn Burchert sheds some light on the darkness obscuring Grunow’s practice by presenting the background and details of Grunow’s teaching, concluding by examining the striking parallels between her harmonization teaching and meditative and yogic practices, which had already been introduced at the Bauhaus in Johannes Itten’s preliminary course. → more

●Article
Three Preliminary Courses: Itten, Moholy-Nagy, Albers

It was the special qualities of the Swiss artist Johannes Itten, whose career as a primary and secondary school teacher was characterized by adherence to the principles of reform pedagogy, to have introduced a stabilizing structural element into the still unstable early years of the Bauhaus: the preliminary course which—in addition to the dual concept of teaching artistic and manual skills and thinking—was to remain a core part of Bauhaus pedagogy, despite considerable historical changes and some critical objections, until the closure of the school in 1933. → more

●Artist Text
Open Your Eyes — Breathing New Life Into Bauhaus Papercuts

My artistic practice working primarily with abstract folded paper objects led me to Josef Albers and his similar obsession with paper as an instructional medium. Initially looking for pleated paper forms and to learn more about the history of these techniques, I have since been swept up in the maelstrom of Albers' pedagogical mindset. It’s difficult to look at one area of his thinking and not get pulled into many other directions, finding yourself challenged at every turn. → more

●Article
A Mystic Milieu — Johannes Itten and Mazdaznan at Bauhaus Weimar

Mazdaznan had a significant although often misunderstood impact on the life and work of Johannes Itten, a key figure in the development of the Weimar Bauhaus. A devout practitioner of Mazdaznan, he was responsible for introducing it to students of the Bauhaus in the early 1920s. This essay explores the intimate relationship between Itten, Mazdaznan and the Bauhaus and, in so doing, also underscores how in its infancy the Bauhaus was very different from its later incarnation as a school associated primarily with technical innovation. → more

●Article
Johannes Itten and Mazdaznan at the Bauhaus

Having experimented with Mazdaznan’s teachings on nutrition, breathing and character while studying at the Stuttgart Academy of Art (1913–16), Johannes Itten used these findings for the first time as a “teaching and educational system” while directing his Viennese painting school (1916–19). By 1918/19 at the latest (still before his move to the Bauhaus), Itten had also learned about Mazdaznan’s racial model. But how did the racialist worldview of the Swiss Bauhaus “master” affect Bauhaus practice? → more

●Artist Text
The Egyptian Postures

In the late nineteenth century the self-styled Dr. Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish founded Mazdaznan, a quasi-religious movement of vegetarian diet and body consciousness, which flourished across the USA and Europe until the 1940's. The Egyptian Postures is a guide to the most advanced Mazdaznan exercises that Johannes Itten taught his students at the Bauhaus. This edition of Dr. Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish’s original instructions has been newly edited and illustrated by Ian Whittlesea with images of actor Ery Nzaramba demonstrating the postures. → more

●Article
The Bauhaus, the Nazis and German Post War Nation Building Processes

On 4 May 1968 the exhibition 50 Years of the Bauhaus was opened at the Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart. Designed by Herbert Bayer and conceived amongst others by Hans Maria Wingler and Ludwig Grote, the exhibition was shown in eight museums worldwide until 1971. To this day, it is considered one of the most influential post-war exhibitions on the Bauhaus and was of great significance in the course of the nation building process for the still-young Federal Republic. Fifty years later the Württembergischer Kunstverein undertook a critical rereading of the historical exhibition, which created a long-term image and brand of Bauhaus that has been and still needs to be called in question: not least in such a year of jubilation. → more

●Artist Text
The Legacies of the Bauhaus — For the Present and the Future

“My method of bringing new life to archival images is to look at what happens at the margins rather than the center of a picture. I am also obsessed with making links, based on the belief that everything is connected. And also with what I call ‘narrative environments,’ mediating spaces facilitating new forms of engagement.” Luca Frei is a commissioned artist for bauhaus imaginista: Corresponding With. He talks about his approach to his installation for the exhibition at MoMAK in Kyoto. → more

●Article
Naked Functionalism and the Anti-Aesthetic — The Activities of Renshichirō Kawakita in the 1930s

Kawakita called the educational activities that developed around the central axis of the School of New Architecture and Design “kōsei education.” The term “compositional/structural education” is often taken nowadays to refer to a preparatory course in composition derived from the Bauhaus—plastic arts training in which plastic elements such as color, form and materials are treated abstractly.  → more

●Article
The Bauhaus and the Tea Ceremony

The impact of the Bauhaus teaching methods reached far beyond Germany. Conversely, throughout its existence, a Japanese sensibility permeated the Bauhaus, springing from the Japonisme of individual professors, until its closure in 1933. This article analyzes the reciprocal impact of German and Japanese design education in the interbellum period in order to shed new light on the tightly knit network of associations then connecting Japan and Europe. → more

●Article
Johannes Itten’s Interest in Japanese Ink Painting — Shounan Mizukoshi and Yumeji Takehisa’s Japanese ink painting classes at the Itten-Schule

It’s widely known that Johannes Itten had an interest in Asian philosophy and art. He had a series of fruitful encounters with Japanese artists while leading his Itten-Schule art institute in Berlin (1926–34). In this article Yoshimasa Kaneko presents his research of these exchanges: In 1931 Nanga painter Shounan Mizukoshi taught Japanese ink painting in Nanga style at the Itten-Schule; in 1932 Jiyu Gakuen students Mitsuko Yamamuro and Kazuko Imai (Married name: Sasagawa) studied there; and finally, in 1933 the painter and poet Yumeji Takehisa also taught Japanese ink painting (including Nanga style) at Itten’s invitation. → more

●Article
“The Attack on the Bauhaus” — A Collage that Became a Symbol of the Closure of the Bauhaus

For the Yamawaki couple, their studies at the Dessau Bauhaus ended with the closure of the Dessau site. Iwao’s luggage for his return home also included his collage Der Schlag gegen das Bauhaus. It was first published in the architecture magazine Kokusai kenchiku in December 1932. Iwao let the collage speak for itself, publishing it without comment. → more

●Artist Work
The O Horizon — A Film Produced for bauhaus imaginista

The Otolith Group have been commissioned to produce The O Horizon for bauhaus imaginista, a new film containing studies of Kala Bhavana as well as the wider environments of Santiniketan and Sriniketan. Through rare footage of art, craft, music and dance, it explores the material production of the school and its community as well as the metaphysical inclinations that guided Tagore’s approach to institution building. → more

●Article
A Virtual Cosmopolis — Bauhaus and Kala Bhavan

The Bauhaus is renowned for its contribution to modernist architecture and design. Less known but equally significant is its pioneering role in opening up a transcultural network that created the conditions for global conversations on art and design as early as the 1920s. → more

●Article
Reclaiming the National — Against Nationalism

The question of how one resists populist nationalism is both obvious and fiendishly difficult. This sounds like a paradoxical proposition, and, indeed, it is. I am inspired by an early critique of nationalism which bears an uncanny resonance in today’s world: a critique that was made in 1916 by the Bengal poet and visionary, Rabindranath Tagore, during a lecture tour in Japan, in the midst of the First World War. → more

●Article
Sriniketan and Beyond — Arts and Design Pedagogy in the Rural Sphere

In this article Natasha Ginwala examines how certain Bauhaus ideas flowed into Tagore’s pedagogic experiment and rural reconstruction program at Sriniketan (created in 1921–22), as well as the engagement with design Dashrath Patel, the founding secretary of the National Institute of Design (NID) and its leading pedagogue, pursued in the rural sphere. → more

●Article
Santiniketan — Rules of Metaphor and Other Pedagogic Tools

This essay was occasioned by the Delhi exhibition of the Hangzhou chapter of bauhaus imaginista and the accompanying seminar in December 2018. The overarching brief of the seminar was to discuss the pedagogic aspects of schools in various parts of the world that are relatable to the practices of Bauhaus. Specifically, the essay attempts to capture the foundational moments of Kala Bhavana, the art school in Santiniketan that, incidentally, also steps into its centenary year in 2019. → more

●Text Compilation
News from Santiniketan — A Text Compilation of Educational Texts from Santiniketan

Unlike the Bauhaus, Kala Bhavana had no written manifesto or curriculum. However, a corpus of writing developed around the school, largely produced by the school’s artists and teachers. The academic Partha Mitter, whose own writing has explored the interplay between the struggle against colonialism, modernism, and the cultural avant-garde in India, has selected a group of texts on education in Santiniketan. → more

●Article
Bauhaus Calcutta

ln December 1922, ‘The Fourteenth Annual Exhibition of the lndian Society of Oriental Art’ was held at Samavaya Bhavan, number seventeen Park Street. Paintings by artists from the ‘Bengal school’—all of them members of the lndian Society of Oriental Arts—were exhibited. Most of these artists painted in a manner, which would have been recognisable as that school’s invention, a particularly lndian signature style, with mythology as preferred subject. Hung on the other side of the hall was a large selection of works from the Bauhaus.  → more

●Video and Introduction
Ritwik’s Ramkinker — A Film in the Process

Ritwik Ghatak’s film Ramkinker Baij: A Personality Study on the sculptor from Santiniketan is like a spurt, a sudden expression of ebullient enthusiasm from a friend, who is said to have shared artistic affinities with him. Incidentally, it also registers, through a conversational method, the process of discovering the artist, who was embedded, organic, yet global and most advanced for his time. → more

●Artist Work
Anna Boghiguian — A Play to Play

The works from Anna Boghiguian shown here are from an installation commissioned by the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva) titled A Play to Play as part of the exhibition Tagore’s Universal Allegories in 2013. These works incorporate elements associated with Tagore, from the artist’s frequent visits to Santiniketan. → more

+ Add this text to your collection!