De Stijl, Bauhaus, and International Style Architecture. What's the difference?

In the history of Modern Art Class that I am now taking, the instructor projected an image of the Schröder House as an example of the Dutch style, De Stijl.

Schröder House, Gerrit Rietveld, 1924. Utrecht, Netherlands.

I thought  that this example of De Stijl architecture looked a lot like Southern California beach houses. Did this style simply morph into the ubiquitous beach house, or was there a better answer?

 Lovell Beach House, Rudolf Schindler, 1926. Newport Beach, CA

Rudolf Schindler graduated from  the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in 1911. He moved to Chicago in 1914 and worked for  Frank Lloyd Wright. When wright was in Tokyo working on The Imperial Hotel, Schindler was working on projects in Los Angeles. From1919-1922, he supervised the Hollyhock House, which has Wrights Prairie style stamp all over it. In 1922 Schindler designed the Lovell Beach House, that was completed in 1926 on the Balboa Peninsula of Newport Beach. To me the two houses seem more than similar

The next slide shown was an example of Bauhaus arcitecture – the Barcelona Pavillon designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the  German Pavilion at the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona, Spain. 

Barcelona Pavillon, Mies van der Rohe, 1929.

Interior of Barcelona Pavillon, Mies van der Rohe, 1929.

Recently I saw the Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA exhibition “How to Read El Pato Pascual: Disney’s Latin America and Latin America’s Disney”, at the Schindler House in West Hollywood. I thought the Bauhaus building in Barcelona, looked a lot like the Schindler House.

 Schindler House Interior, Rudolf Schindler, 1922, West Hollywood,CA.

Schindler House, Rudolf Schindler, 1922, West Hollywood,CA.

Around Los Angeles, the white Beach House style has a larger more modern version that is perched on the steep slopes of the hills and canyons. The earliest was arguably the Lovell House, designed by Richard Neutra and built from 1927–1929. Neutra attended the Vienna University of Technology and worked with Frank Lloyd Wright and later with his friend and future competitor, Rudolf Schindler. Neutra and his family  occupied one of the apartments of the Schindler House while Rudolf Schindler and his wife occupied the other.

Lovell House, Richard Neutra, 1929. Los Angeles 

After Lovell House, Modernist homes slowly started appearing. After WWII with the residential housing boom and new Freeways, they were all over Southern California. Arts & Architecture magazine sponsored a project from 1945 to 1966, the Case Study Houses. The goal was inexpensive residential living space for the housing boom. 27 of the 36 entries were built. All but 3 were around Los Angeles. Julius Shulman, an architecture photographer, photographed most of the Case Study homes. It was his iconic, high contrast black and white photograph of the Stahl House, Case Study #22 that brought California Mid-century Modern to the average person.

   Case Study House #22, Los Angeles, 1960. Pierre

   Koenig, Architect. Photograph, 1960, Julius Shulman.

The lines of the home were simple and the glass made the two young women in cocktail dresses seem like they were floating over the city. I was about 15 or 16 years old when I first saw this image. I still get the sensation of floating over a city when I drive I-40 at night approving Albuquerque from the West. There's about a 700 foot drop From Laguna to the Rio Grande River. Each year the lights of the city move father west into the scrub, but it's still  about 10 minutes of hovering over the lights of the city. It's similar driving I-10 West to Indio, California but the descent is steeper into the Coachella Valley.

                                      Case Study House #22, Los Angeles, 1960. Pierre Koenig, Architect

If the Stahl House looks familiar. it might be because about a dozen movies or TV episodes have been filmed there.

So how is it that these homes look so similar despite the different countries – Bauhaus in Germany, De Stijl in the Netherlands, two Viennese architects living in Los Angeles during the1920's, and an American architect  more than a generation later?

In 1932 the Museum of Modern Art, in New York (MoMA), had an exhibit Modern Architecture: International Exhibition. The title of the catalogue for the exhibit was published as The International Style: Architecture Since 1922. The foreword of the exhibition catalogue gave clarity about this previously unnamed style.

The present exhibition is an assertion that the confusion of the past forty years, or rather of the                past century, may shortly come to an end. Ten years ago the Chicago Tribune competition brought forth almost as many different styles as there were projects. Since then the ideas of a number of progressive architects have converged to form a genuinely new style which is rapidly spreading throughout the world..... Because of its simultaneous development in several different countries and because of its world-wide distribution it has been called the International Style.

The exhibit, curated by historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock and architect Philip Johnson was the first architectural exhibit at MoMA. Elements of the new style – emphasis of volume over mass, geometric regularity and repetitive modules, no ornamentation, lightweight mass-produced, industrial materials were  discussed in the catalogue. It was unusual for an institution to name and codify a style. Previously it was the writings, often derogatory, of art critics that named new styles.

The Modernist Art Style Hitler Loved

Hitler failed the entry requirement to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 1907 and again in 1908. The sketches he submitted  were precise drawings and he was  told he might apply to the Academy's  architectural school. But, Hitler had dropped out of secondary school and was not eligible. He ended up tinting post cards in Vienna for 5 years to supplement the meager sales from his paintings.

Most Modern Art was labeled by Hitler as degenerate. He was not always hostile to Impressionism unless the artist was Jewish or had become Degenerate. Shortly before the Degenerate Art Exhibition opened in Munich in 1937, he said in a speech, "works of art which cannot be understood in themselves but need some pretentious instruction book to justify their existence will never again find their way to the German people." Heroic realism was what he wanted. 

Carl Grossberg (1894–1940), had attended architecture school. He painted and sketched in a Precisionist style. It was the perfect style to showcase the Third Reich's rapid industrial growth. I guess Hitler didn't wonder why in Grossberg's paintings the streets are devoid of people. The lonely scenes are similar to those of Edward Hopper.

Grossberg was an Officer in the Wehrmacht and returned to active duty on the Polish Front in 1939. In 1940, he died in an automobile accident in France.

                                     Carl Grossberg, Bridge over Schwarzbach Street 

                                          in Wuppertal, 1927.

Carl Grossberg, Berlin, AVUS, 1928.

Carl Grossberg, Coffee Roaster, 1933. Graphite on paper.

Carl Grossberg, Der gelbe Boiler, 1933

Carl Grossberg, The Belts, 1933

Carl Grossberg, The Paper Machine, 1934

Carl Grossberg Vorbereitungssaal Weberei, 1935.

Carl Grossberg, Interior, 1935.

Carl Grossberg, Schleuse Friedrichsfeld, 1938.

Androgyny During Germany's Weimar Republic

For years I have been fascinated with the Cabaret scene during the Weimar Republic that existed during the 14 years between WWI and National Socialism under Hitler. It is probably an obsession to effortlessly watch the 15 ½ hours of  Rainer Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz. Weimar cinema tackled issues such as homosexuality, prostitution and anti-Semitism. After years of watching films by Robert Wiene, Paul Wegener, Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, and G. W. Pabst, it wasn't dificult to realize  that Fassbinder was taking so long so that the audience could experience the dreariness, stagnation and frustration of the economically less fortunate who then embraced National Socialism.

In 2016 I posted A look at the Metropolis: from Prostitutes, Lustmord, and Cabarets, to Economic Recovery in Weimar Germany and the New Objectivity 
 
This posting will look at female androgyny in lifestyle and fashion. 

Otto Dix, Portrait of the Journalist
Sylvia von Harden, 1926.

Otto dix has exagerated the androgynous look of Sylvia von Harden, a poet and writer of short stories who frequented the Romanisches Café in Berlin and sat at her corner table. The café regulars were the who's who of the Belin avante garde, including Oto Dix, Bertolt Brecht, George Grosz, Alfred Döblin, Joachim Ringelnatz, Erich Maria Remarque, and Billy Wilder. Aspiring writers would go the Romanisches Café in hopes of launching their careers. Those already established were at tables séparées. At the beginning of the 1972 musical film Cabaret, about 20 seconds after Joel Grey starts to sing "Willkommen", there is a brief recreation of this painting. Von Harden loved this caricature of herself. Many of the industrialists hated the distortions in their portraits by Dix. Her female figure is flattened by the dress. The fingers are grossly elongated, her right hand covers her breasts and the left hand goes across her pelvis. Her hair was in the new bob style or as it is called in German, Bubikopf. Dix told von Harden "I must paint you! I simply must! ... You are representative of an entire epoch!' The monocle was Dix's idea.

Otto Dix, The Dancer Anita Berber, 1925

Anita Berber frequently danced in cabarets totally nude. Her drug addiction and bisexuality were no secret. Besides alcohol, cocaine and opiates she was partial to chloroform mixed with ether. She frequently would be in a hotel lobby nude but partially covered with a fur coat.

The more traditional couple in the background are gossiping about the absurdity of Fräulein Mia a man wearing high heeled shoes or a woman in a man's jacket and tie. The short hair style, in the popular Bubikopf, could be that of a woman.

                      Liebende Frauen (Women in Love), 1929

Lebende Frauen was one of several lesbian magazines published during the Weimar Republic. 

Poster for German version of The Blue Angel, 1930

Josef von Sternberg, the Austrian American film director was invited to make the first feature-length full-talkie in Germany, The Blue Angel (1930), a co-production of Paramount and UFA. English and German versions were made simultaneously. Dietrich played Lola Lola, a cabaret performer in a top hat and with her legs exposed. 

Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel, 1930

Later that year Von Sternberg bought her to Hollywood. They made six more films together. In her first American film Morocco (1930), Sternberg insisted that she wear a black tuxedo. Her insatiable sexual appetite for both women and men started in Germany, but received its notoriety in America. Dietrich had affairs with men who had had affairs with woman that she had affairs with.

Marlene Dietrich in Morocco, 1930

Publicity still for Morocco, 1930

The Influence of the Flat Landscape of the Netherlands on Piet Mondrian's Abstractions

Tableau 1,1921.

Some artists are experimental innovators, who work by trial and error revising their style. They are uncertain about their goals and their mature style appears gradually and usually later in their life. Other artists are conceptual innovators who have precise goals and frequently have radical innovations that break with existing conventions. Their great works usually come early in their careers before thoughts and habits are firmly entrenched. Cézanne was an experimental innovator, while Picasso was a conceptual innovator producing great works early in his career.

Piet Mondrian was a very methodical experimental innovator who made serial abstract changes over decades. Representational art was progressively simplified down to geometric forms and primary colors.

The selected works below show how the flat landscape of the Netherlands was abstracted over time to have a profound influence on his well known grid pattern.

At Work on the Land, 1898. 

Summer Night, 1906.

View from the dunes with beach and piers, 1909.

Dune-II 1909.

Dune Landscape, 1909.

Dune V, 1909.

Dune in Zealand, 1910.

Dune IV, 1910.

Trees were also abstracted into a grid but this was a few years later.

Red Tree,1908.

Grey Tree, 1911.

Flowering Apple Tree, 1912.

Green Color Combinations in Kehinde Wiley's Paintings

Green is very common background color in Wiley's paintings. He frequently uses a bright yellow green with yellow and yellow orange accents in the background patterns. These three adjacent colors on the color wheel form an analogous color scheme.

His backgrounds are often floral patterns and he uses the below analogous combination that is frequently found in nature.

Analogous colors are usually calming. It is how he adds the complimentary colors that gives his signature bravura look. The subject might be wearing red against the green background. If the subject is wearing bright green there will be more blues purples and reds in the background.  

He uses variations of reds such as ochres, siennas, and umbers for the skin tones. There is no black skin like in a Kerry James Marshall painting. These colors are on the opposite side of the color wheel from the background colors. The figure often appears as if it pops from the background. Using backlighting intensifies this effect.

The Obama Presidential Portrait is where he stepped away from his wild contrasts.

The few purple and red flowers are small and widely spaced. The flowers were selected for their meaning in Obama's life. Purple African lily for his father's African heritage, white jasmine for his Hawaiian birthplace, multicolored chrysanthemum for the city of Chicago, and rose buds for love. 

Many had their doubts as to whether Kehinde Wiley could make a dignified Presidential Portrait. Most Republicans still do.

The Battle for Literacy and Soviet Avant-garde Posters

One of my favorite Soviet Avant-garde posters is a poster for the Leningrad State Publishing House. Alexander Rodchenko made this iconic photomontage in 1924. It is one of many propaganda posters to eliminate illiteracy. When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, male illiteracy was estimated at 60%, and female was close to 90%. The rates were even higher in rural areas. To Lenin literacy was a major priority. "Without literacy, there can be no politics, there can only be rumors, gossip and prejudice." One of Lenin's early programs was Likbez – an acronym for "likvidatsiya bezgramotnosti",  "elimination of illiteracy."

The three Cyrillic letters Л Е Н on the black background correspond to the Latin letters LEN for Leningrad. Г И З on the red is GIZ, the initials for gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo -State Publishing House. Russians love to use acronyms or names formed from abbreviations. The publishing house was known as LENGIZ. It was a designer's dream for Rodchenko that the red and black could symmetrically divide the the two syllable acronym. The woman has her hand against her mouth and is shouting the words "books in all branches of knowledge." Over the black background in the shape of a megaphone is the word книги (KNIGI or books). The woman is Lilya Brik, the wealthy Jewish mistress of futurist poet, playwright, and artist Vladimir Mayakovsky. She also was the wife of the writer and literary critic Osip Brik. Mayakovsy later moved in with the Briks. Rodchenko frequently collaborated with Mayakovsky on designs for the literary and art magazine LEF. Almost everyone in the Russian and Soviet Avant-garde knew each other, Many of them, and even Matisse, did portraits of Lilya and her sister. 

In the poster, Lilya is wearing a head scarf emblematic of the proletariat and peasantry. In the early years after the Revolution, literacy classes were hindered by a distrust between the peasant students and the teachers with a petty bourgeois background. In the lower right corner are Alexander Rodchenko's initials in Cyrillic– PA..  Being an advertising and propaganda poster, it had no name, but now it is often called Books. 

Rotate the poster 90 degrees and an old-fashioned lock appears that can be unlocked through literacy.

Russian and Soviet Avant-garde posters used heavy and bold futuristic fonts, not the thin, squiggly, curved and whiplash fonts of Art Nouveau. The fonts had simplicity and were sans-serif. The colors of the posters were bold and pure with rarely any different shades. Red and black was a common color combination.

Here are some post Revolutionary and early Soviet posters about fighting illiteracy:

Knowledge Will Break the Chains of Slavery
Alexei Alexandrovich Radakov, 1920.

                                                                                                                                                                           

If you will not read books, you will soon forget the grammar.1925.





















Literacy is the road to Communism, 1920, in Russian and Yiddish.

The illiterate person is a blind man: Everywhere pitfalls and misfortunes await him.
Alexei Alexandrovich Radakov, 1920.

 Night of the Books, Varvara Stepanova, 1920.
(Stepanova was married to Rodchenko)

Peasant woman, consolidate the unity of workers and peasants,1925.






















In 2014 David Redon combined famous musicians and performers with vintage advertisements. He used Beyoncé in his parody of the Rodchenko poster.

It's an interesting parody, but the early Soviet feel is lost with his red and pink combination.









To see more of Redon's vintage advertisements go to:

https://www.designboom.com/art/david-redon-remix-vintage-american-ads-pop-icons-04-04-2014/