gail-nina anderson looks forward to a major Bauhaus retrospective at mima, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art...

Bauhaus is indeed a label of remarkable potency and resonance, and this multi-media exhibition at Middlesborough’s still shiny and new gallery of modern and contemporary art should remind us what it really meant, thought it meant and has come to mean.

Like most things in the modern world, the Bauhaus was able to flourish (and later forced to close) only because economic and political circumstances allowed it to do so. There’s a certain irony in a design school/movement which can preach high-flown doctrines of pure form but in reality functioned because post-WWI Germany needed to become economically competitive in a world marketplace where mechanisation and mass production were already, by 1919 and the inception of the Weimar Republic, established as the way of the future. Sometimes what looks like a trigger is really just a response…

Contemporary architects such as Peter Behrens (see his remarkable industrial design work for German electrical company AEG) had already grasped the bull by the horns and started down the dubious but inevitable path that led to standardisation of components, visible use of such constructional materials as steel and poured concrete and the almighty power of corporate identity. It was Walter Gropius, however, who provided the label and the theory by presiding over Weimar’s new, all-media art college, the Staaliches Bauhaus. Later on its location would shift to Dessau, then Berlin, there would be an off-shoot in Chicago, and like all academic institutions, it would engender more squabbles, name-calling and divided loyalties than a day-time soap. Some massive egos were involved, which is often the way when people are convinced their ideas will change the world. Sad to say, no-one’s ego proved bigger than that of Hitler, and after some remarkable arguments about the unGerman nature of Bauhaus Modernism (who wants a flat roof when you can have a Gothic pinnacle or a homely slope of red tiles?) the school was closed in 1933.

But, of course, its soul goes marching on. This is partly because the Bauhaus had become a focus for ideas about functionalism, new materials and the sort of social engineering that tells people where and how they need to live to survive in a modern urban environment. This could be extremely positive, aiding the availability of simple, well-designed environments and furniture, and making the best use of economically-sound processes of production. It could also be a label behind which all the soulless corrupting forces of shoddy town-planning could hide – how many hideous estates and tower blocks have been excused in the name of Mies van der Rohe?

What’s fascinating in our post-Post-Modern present is the idea that the Bauhaus presented a Modernism (i.e. a style firmly rooted, like all others, in the time and circumstances of its conception) that was supposed to be timeless. It started its students off on what would prove to be an incredibly influential Basic Design course during which they were allowed to study no historical precedents because everything could be reduced to universal first principles. Read it and weep – then go to the exhibition and consider what really happens when you try to take a cultural concept out of history.

For yes – this show documents a piece of art/design history, and if we do still use the ideas, labels and even the designs, well, the same could be said about the Renaissance or Ancient Greece. Every time you discover one of those ubiquitous metal-framed Wassily chairs by Marcel Breuer sitting in your optician’s waiting room (and if you don’t see them there, then you should probably change your optician) you’re looking at a quotation, a statement that says "This is what it means to be Modern, isn’t it?" You have the right to reply either way, but it’s certainly good to see an exhibition that presents us with the choice, the context as well as the continuation, the original as well as the quotes.

And mima is doing it properly, putting a contemporary show, "Language of Vision", alongside the main "Bauhaus 1919-1933" one to show how the legacy can still be inspirational and the ideas open to continuing interpretation in art as well as design. Most entrancing of all, mima’s Sound Space on the Third floor Roof Terrace will present a series of recordings form the early 20th century intended to explore the myths surrounding the Bauhaus, and will intersperse these with the work of composers associated with it. The stylistic inheritance of German functionalism from the inter-war period with the music of Schoenberg thrown in – far from forcing the viewer back to basics, this should demonstrate the way that all good design draws strength from its roots (sometimes even the ones it doesn’t admit to) and then goes on growing.

Bauhaus 1919-1933, mima, Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art, until February 17 2008. 01642 7226 722.

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