PERMANENT REVOLUTION, MONOLOGUES

Excerpted from texts by Oskar Schlemmer, Gertrud Grunow, Johannes Itten, and Walter Gropius
If you wish to re-print or quote from sections of the monologue, please credit the authors

NANCE, MONOLOGUE 1:

Our school was founded after the horror of war, in the chaos of revolution, in the era of the flowering of an emotion-laden, explosive art. The triumph of industry before the war, and the orgy of destruction during it, brought to light an impassioned romanticism that was a flaming protest against materialism.

The misery of the war was also a spiritual anguish.

Reverse the values - wedge the new into the old world - Death to the past, to moonlight & to the soul.. Let Reason and Science become our king, and the architect and engineer craft our future of unlimited possibility.

Today, we can do no more than ponder the total plan, lay the foundations & prepare the building stones, but:

We exist. We have the will. We are producing.

Excerpt from Oskar Schlemmer's manifesto 'Das Staatliche Bauhaus in Weimar' (September 1923).


NANCE, MONOLOGUE 2:

What is the significance of sound and color for man? Scientists study the wavelengths of light, and psychologists study the physical effects of sensation, but all these things are just surface. What is the substance behind the surface? Behind sensation? What is the substance behind the structure of the entire visible world? What is behind the structure of the human organism and the human spirit? Light and color are no longer just blue and red - they are a living force.

Every organic being is filled with light. We move according to time-space, or space-time. Every living force and every color corresponds to a lawful order, to a sound or to a movement.

A form of life emerges from the unity of sound and color. A form of life reveals itself to us through movement. Everything moves, and nothing is ever dead, for otherwise the world would not exist.

Excerpt from Gertrud Grunow's 'Der Aufbau der lebendigen Form durch Farbe, Form, Ton' (1923) and Johannes Itten's 'Analysen alter Meister' (1921).


GUZMAN, MONOLOGUE 3:

An object is designed by its nature. In order, then, to design it to function properly - a vessel, a chair, a house - one must first of all study its nature, for it is expected to serve its purpose perfectly: it must fulfill its function in a practical way, be durable, inexpensive and beautiful.

It is only through constant contact with advancing technology, the discovery of new materials and new ways of putting things together that the creative individual can learn to establish a living relationship between the present time and tradition and thus develop a new approach to design.

  • Resolute affirmation of the living environment of machines & vehicles;

  • Organic designing of objects in keeping with their own present-day laws, without any romantic gloss or fanciful frills;

  • Limitation to typical primary forms & colors that everyone can understand;

  • Simplicity in multiplicity, economical utilisation of space, material, time & money.

Excerpt from Walter Gropius' 'Principles of Bauhaus Production' (1925).