Gestalt: From the Bauhaus to Robert Wilson

Abstract

There are innumerable historical connections between the artists of the previous two chapters and those of the German Bauhaus.¹ We have also seen that Lefebvre links the Russian constructivists and the Bauhaus together, though he places particular significance on the work of the Bauhaus in the reconceptualisation of a modern space. He characterises this as one that posits a link:

between industrialization and urbanization, between workplaces and dwelling-places. No sooner had this link been incorporated into theoretical thought than it turned into a project, even into a programme. The curious thing is that this ‘programmatic’ stance was looked upon at the time as both rational and revolutionary, although in reality it was tailor-made for the state — whether of the state capitalist or the state-socialist variety. (Lefebvre 1991: 124)

This ‘worldwide, homogenous and monotonous architecture of the state’ (Lefebvre 1991: 126) implied a focus, not on individual objects, but on the interrelationship of objects in the spirit of the German Werkbund, whose concerns ranged ‘From the sofa cushion to city planning’ (Muthesius in Schwartz 1996: 22).