bau5: music as art as music as art

To­day is most­ly pre­sen­ta­tion.

My orig­i­nal plan for the ses­sion was to use more slides from my his­to­ry class Bauhaus lec­ture. But since I was build­ing this course very last minute be­cause of sched­ul­ing, I found my­self with no time to adapt the Kandin­sky con­tent.

So I threw it on them: YOU do the re­search, YOU do a pre­sen­ta­tion, us­ing what­ev­er ap­proach you wish. And found this goes over so well, I start us­ing it in oth­er class­es. And if the whole class is re­search­ing the same sub­ject, by the time we’re done we typ­i­cal­ly have a de­cent overview of whomev­er we’re study­ing.

(Plus, they of­ten find ob­scure things I may not have found/covered. Which is also good.)

Por­trait by Gabriele Mün­ter

This time thru: Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky (1866–1944)

And to start, here’s the stu­dent-found mu­sic we end up dis­cussing:

wass­i­ly cor­ru­gat­ed
First stu­dent to present end­ed up mak­ing art – af­ter re­al­ly div­ing into how Kandin­sky worked. He gave an overview of his life – the feel­ings that come from colour and its Uni­ver­sal Cor­re­spon­dence be­tween Tri­an­gle, Square, Cir­cle – and ze­roed in on Kandin­sky run­ning out of ma­te­ri­als late in his ca­reer, work­ing on card­board ’cause that’s all he had.

The stu­dent used to draw on card­board elec­tion signs be­cause af­ter the elec­tion ends, the signs are easy to grab. He de­cid­ed to go at it again, run­ning through the pro­por­tion read­ings in our text, cre­at­ing his rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of Kandin­sky on card­board.

Ex­e­cu­tion needs work (craft is a bit messy), but the ba­sic de­sign is there. I note it’s a good start­ing point for an in­ter­est­ing piece – and it’d be good to move on to bet­ter sup­plies, bet­ter tools, with care­ful crafts­man­ship (I’ll also keep mov­ing him for­ward with form).

emo­tion­al let­ter­ing
The next stu­dent added Kandinsky’s con­nec­tion to mu­sic, with cel­lo +pi­ano.

‘I ad­mire how he could elic­it an emo­tion­al re­sponse with­out be­ing tied to tra­di­tion­al im­agery.’

He also cre­at­ed a piece of art, which is a valiant at­tempt, but lacks the point line and plane un­der­stand­ing we’re work­ing on.

But on clos­er in­spec­tion, we found his let­ter­ing was a whole oth­er thing.

Student’s lo­ca­tion: Garage, with some beer
Mu­sic play­ing: Rosie & The Orig­i­nals, Stand By Me

In fact, his HOPE scrib­bles are LOADED with geom­e­try and the el­e­ments one might see in a ab­stract mod­ern piece. A good place to start. We ask where this came from. And sim­i­lar to what hap­pened in our sec­ond class, it was an emo­tion­al place. A re­cent death in the fam­i­ly. With saddness.

Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, Blue Seg­ment, 1921.

neuin­ter­pre­ta­tion
Wal­dorf up­dates her work from last week (above) in­flu­enced by Kandinsky’s Blue Seg­ment.

Then, turned side­ways, ‘It looks like a chick­en, spew­ing sun­light!’

Kandin­sky moved far­ther into ab­strac­tion by falling in love with one of his paint­ings placed up­side down. We talk a bit about how this re­al­ly takes ab­stract (and real) work to a whole new place, and is not a bad prac­tice (I do it A LOT in my own work).

In­clud­ed with this chick­en is a well-writ­ten, well-pre­sent­ed, spo­ken word per­son­al overview of Kandin­sky – with ex­cel­lent quotes pep­pered about:

‘Colour is the key­board, the eyes are the ham­mers, the soul is the pi­ano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touch­ing one key or an­oth­er, to cause vi­bra­tions in the soul.’
—Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky

Claude Mon­et, Wheat­stacks (Sun­set, Snow Ef­fect), 1890–91

On Monet’s im­pres­sion­ist paint­ings of Haystacks, ‘That it was a haystack the cat­a­logue in­formed me. I could not rec­og­nize it. This non-recog­ni­tion was painful to me. I con­sid­ered that the painter had no right to paint in­dis­tinct­ly. I dul­ly felt the the ob­ject of the paint­ing was miss­ing. And I no­ticed with sur­prise and con­fu­sion that the pic­ture not only gripped me, but im­pressed it­self per­ma­nent­ly on my mem­o­ry. Paint­ing took on a fairy-tale pow­er and splen­dor.’
—Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky

Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, Kom­po­si­tion 8, 1923

‘Mu­sic is the ul­ti­mate teacher … Yel­low is the colour of mid­dle C on a brassy trum­pet; black is the colour of clo­sure, and the end of things; and that com­bi­na­tions of colours pro­duce vi­bra­tional fre­quen­cies, akin to chords played on a pi­ano.’
—Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky

filler
Up next is a few have to get the home­work done pre­sen­ta­tions where stu­dents found SOME stuff, but not too much. At one point no one in the class is pay­ing any at­ten­tion to one of the speak­ers. Even the speak­er isn’t pay­ing at­ten­tion to their own talk. Be­cause (we dis­cuss) if you put no ef­fort into your work, your au­di­ence will put no ef­fort into en­gag­ing with you.

The I’ll de­cide what work I’ll do stu­dent brings in three (blur­ry) self­ies tak­en at a night club – and notes the lights be­hind him look a lot like Kandinsky’s work. And that’s about it.

‘I don’t do re­search, and I’ve nev­er done it be­fore,’ comes from the Star Wars kid, who ar­rives to class over two hours late (un­for­tu­nate­ly, he miss­es the bet­ter pre­sen­ta­tions).

At one point in his (most­ly aca­d­e­m­ic) pre­sen­tion, he gets a lit­tle per­son­al about Kandin­sky: ‘I like that he in­cor­po­rates mu­sic. I like mu­sic my­self. I was lis­ten­ing to Clip Your Wings by Old Gray while look­ing up things.’ THIS gives me a lot more info to go on, gun­na keep work­ing on this kid. Har­ness this, if I can.

We learn from oth­ers that Kandin­sky was orig­i­nal­ly a lawyer. Went into art at age 30. Most of his work was de­stroyed by the Nazis. And his birth­day list­ed at Wiki is wrong be­cause of the switch to the Gre­go­ri­an cal­en­dar. No one touch­es on his re­la­tion­ships, which a pre­vi­ous class had a very tabloid ap­proach to how they were af­fect­ing his work.

And we have a long dis­ser­ta­tion as to how it’s re­al­ly cool that Kandin­sky stopped be­ing a lawyer. Stu­dent says: ‘’Cause that’s what my fam­i­ly want­ed me to be. And I hate lawyers.’

‘Also I did a piece and left it at home. Home­work was not on my mind.’

I (again) note that I fail a LOT of stu­dents for things like fam­i­ly, re­la­tion­ship prob­lems, and jobs af­fect­ing class­work. (It’s a thread that runs through all my teach­ing: Many, MANY stu­dents who have fam­i­lies set against them study­ing a cre­ative dis­ci­pline and/or go­ing to col­lege).

au­dio vi­su­al
(And now seems to be as good a time as any to re­fer them to In­dra Kupfer­schmid’s True Type of the Bauhaus. ’Cause it AL­WAYS comes up even­tu­al­ly.) (I’m re­fer­ring to the font used on the above slide.)

We end with two in­ter­est­ing slide pre­sen­ta­tions that adapt mu­sic to im­age. In this case Mozart and Project 86. They play out a bit like this video, but dif­fer­ent:

The stu­dents bring up Kandin­sky first ex­pe­ri­enc­ing synes­the­sia as a kid – and how his abil­i­ty to HEAR sound moved him into his ab­stract world. In re­lat­ing to Kandin­sky, the stu­dent men­tions her brain is ‘al­ways mov­ing too. I’m a film ma­jor and I’m on a spir­i­tu­al jour­ney – I can look at art and how it moves me push­es me far­ther with my own stuff. Peo­ple ex­pe­ri­ence film dif­fer­ent­ly.’

Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, Pic­ture with a Black Arch, 1912 (This one re­minds me of Draplin)

time for build­ing!
Stu­dents had to bring in a found item to work with. They (most­ly) did and I ask them to open the draw­ers in their art desks. Cause last I checked NO ONE had emp­tied the draw­ers in a very long time. They’re loaded with pen­cil shav­ings, wrap­pers, all types of shit. Some more than oth­ers.

‘What­ev­er is in your draw­er is the rest of your found items. Please use them for your home­work.’

Kandin­sky CAUSE +EF­FECT AS­SIGN­MENT
Cre­ate two squares: 8x8 inch­es

Us­ing your found ob­jects, de­vel­op your two squares show­ing a re­ac­tion to his work. In­clude HUE and PITCH, SAT­U­RA­TION and SOUND. Lis­ten to at least three songs from four DIF­FER­ENT bands.

And I start them out with a lit­tle bit of

FLOM­MIS­CHEN número 32
« com­bus­tion ar­ro­gante »
16 tracks [1hr 19 min]

(And a dis­cus­sion starts about Holst’s MARS as to whether or not it’s Star Wars)

Next part of home­work:

Once your squares (which may end up as sculp­tures) are done, go to FOTO­FORM and DI­A­GRAM out the squares you just cre­at­ed.

You should end up with a to­tal of four squares. The geo­met­ric in­ter­pre­ta­tions can have all three POINT, LINE, PLANE draw­ings on top of each oth­er (I throw this in just to see what hap­pens. ’Cause I usu­al­ly get a bunch of box­es all over the place and the stu­dents end up over­whelmed; MAYBE this will fix, this group loves com­plex­i­ty).

As pre­dict­ed, there are ques­tions. And no one has vis­it­ed FOTO­FORM since last week. So I ex­plain a bit, but let them go – cause next class we’ll re­al­ly get into how these con­cepts work. I hope.

Plus, READ De­sign Ba­sics Chap­ter 5, pages 88–89; 92–93; 96–97

—steve mehal­lo

Im­age up top: Stu­dent-made Kandin­sky wire­frames

Last year, FLOMM founder Steve Mehal­lo re­built a de­sign fun­da­men­tals course into a five week study of the­o­ries and work done at The Bauhaus (1919–33). This BAU blog se­ries will doc­u­ment the lat­est teach­ing of the course – with les­son plan – Sum­mer 2015 to a group of 8 col­lege stu­dents. What’ll hap­pen, who’ll shine, who’ll drop. Names (and some sit­u­a­tions) have been changed to pro­tect the in­no­cent as well as the guilty.

 
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read
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