Brandt conscious.TEMPO, TEMPO! THE BAUHAUS PHOTOMONTAGES OF MARIANNE BRANDT Marianne Brandt (October 1, 1893 – June 18 1983) was a German painter, sculptor, and designer involved with the Bauhaus beginning in 1923, where her designs for practical metal objects formed an important part of the repertoire. By Elizabeth Otto. Berlin: Jovis. 2005. [pounds sterling]19.99 Bauhaus students saw themselves as radical and left-wing, sporting strange modernist appearances, especially the females with their New Woman short hair and unconventional dress. Unlike other schools, men and women were not segregated but free to join any of the workshops. In practice about thirty per cent of the students were women, most of whom opted for weaving, and only one of the directors was female. Marianne Brandt (1893-1983) was one of the exceptions. Encouraged by Moholy-Nagy she joined the metal workshop, being the only woman there, and soon rose to prominence despite the male chauvinism chauvinism (shō`vənĭzəm), word derived from the name of Nicolas Chauvin, a soldier of the First French Empire. Used first for a passionate admiration of Napoleon, it now expresses exaggerated and aggressive nationalism. of her colleagues, becoming acting director. She designed many iconic products like the Kandem table lamp or silver and ebony teapot as well as light fittings for the new Bauhaus building at Dessau. But almost in private Brandt developed a different art form, photomontage pho·to·mon·tage n. 1. The technique of making a picture by assembling pieces of photographs, often in combination with other types of graphic material. 2. The composite picture produced by this technique. , which had been pioneered by Moholy-Nagy in mainly geometric and abstract Constructivist con·struc·tiv·ism n. A movement in modern art originating in Moscow in 1920 and characterized by the use of industrial materials such as glass, sheet metal, and plastic to create nonrepresentational, often geometric objects. mode. Brandt, however, employed montage (the printed result of collage) in a figurative manner to comment on contemporary inter-war society especially the role of women, gender politics and the militarisation n. 1. militarization. Noun 1. militarisation - act of assembling and putting into readiness for war or other emergency: "mobilization of the troops" militarization, mobilization, mobilisation of technology. From the mid-1920s until 1930 she cut out pictures from new periodicals, combining new and old images as allegories of society's positive and negative trends, often incorporating subtle references to historic fine art. Elizabeth Otto's book reproduces most of the photomontages with detailed and erudite er·u·dite adj. Characterized by erudition; learned. See Synonyms at learned. [Middle English erudit, from Latin descriptions and analyses of each element in the works. This makes interesting reading but the collages themselves without the commentary are fairly impenetrable and not particularly inspiring as images in their own right. Many references seem quite personal, not quite as auto-obsessed as our own Tracy Emin perhaps, and their message is often obscured in a brown 1920s nostalgia soup. They would never have the power and historic importance of the later anti-Nazi photomontages of John Heartfield John Heartfield (June 19, 1891–April 26, 1968) is the anglicized name of the German photomontage artist Helmut Herzfeld. He chose to call himself Heartfield . Brandt successfully worked as designer for various industries but her brilliant career was ended by a combination of the depression, new Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer
Hannes Meyer (November 18, 1889–July 19, 1954) was a Swiss architect and second director of the Bauhaus in Dessau from 1928 to 1930. The Bauhaus had been founded in Weimar in 1919 by Walter Gropius. (who combined the metal and cabinet-making workshops into an interior design department), and the rise of the Nazis who made sure no lefty Bauhaus product got any work. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion