debauhaus1-4, Exercise 3: Around 1923

Model answer:

What changed: in 1923 the Bauhaus held its first large public exhibition in Weimar, and Gropius gave a lecture, "Art and Technology: A New Unity", that is the best-known statement of a shift in emphasis. The school moved from the craft and guild ideal of the 1919 manifesto towards design for industry, standard types and machine production. At the same time Johannes Itten, who stood for the earlier, expressive and spiritual approach, left, and the preliminary course passed to teachers with a more technical, constructivist outlook (check the details and dates).

Why historians disagree about how sharp the change was: older accounts present 1923 as a clean break from craft to industry. More recent studies point to continuity. The workshops kept producing hand-crafted work after 1923, and the interest in industry and standardisation was already part of the Werkbund debate before the school was founded (Chapter 2). They also note that the economic crisis of 1923 and the need to earn money may have driven the shift as much as principle did (check). A fair summary is that the emphasis changed over several years, not that one idea replaced the other overnight.