Bauhaus at 100

Posted on May 13, 2019 by cecelia

A trip to Germany with the Davis Museum of Art at Wellesley College included a tour of the Bauhaus in Dessau. It was an opportunity to see, in person, this important icon of 20^th century architecture and design.

A (very) brief history. In 1919, one hundred years ago, Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany. The design aesthetic was lean and spare. It would influence modern design for years to come, 100 for sure. The Bauhaus was a school where designers, architects, painters, sculptors and craftsmen taught and built items. Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky worked there.

Nazi interference in 1924 made Gropius move the school to Dessau, a city southwest of Berlin. There, he built a campus consisting of the main building, a director’s house and three masters’ houses.

I’ve tried to capture some of the Bauhaus aesthetic like the exterior glass curtain-wall of the main building.

Bauhaus – Main Building

Bauhaus-Main Building

Bauhaus – Main Building

Construction details and color are all strikingly modern.

Bauhaus – Main Building

Furniture was constructed with tubular arms and legs. Door pulls were simple and unadorned.

Bauhaus – Main Building Auditorium Seats

Bauhaus – Main Building Door Detail

Rain-washed cement sidewalks seemed compatible with the tiny balconies.

Bauhaus – Main Building Balconies

The director’s house is a freestanding building. There are also three identical semi-detached houses for the masters. They are white stucco cubic structures designed by Gropius. They are modular with mirrored and rotated floor plans for variety. In the unadorned rooms light from windows, high and low, plays along the walls giving them an almost abstract quality as they intersect one another.

Master’s House

We take for granted much of what Gropius and his followers did to change the nature of design and architecture. What will the next hundred years look like?

Go West Young Man

Posted on April 24, 2012 by cecelia

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX. Photo by Cecelia Feld

Only 35 miles separate Dallas and Fort Worth, so after (or before) we take visitors to the Dallas museums we hop on the freeway and high tail it to Ft. Worth to do the museums there.

The Modern Reflections. Photo by Cecelia Feld

Recently, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (a mouthful, shortened to The Modern) was my focus, literally.

Photo by Cecelia Feld

When architect Tadeo Ando came west he brought an eastern sensibility with him and gave the city not only a building worthy of a significant collection of modern and contemporary art but a piece of art in its own right.

The spare and unembellished steel, glass and concrete building floats on a 1.5 acre reflecting pond. Inside and outside are connected. I wanted to capture the play of light against the building, the cast shadows, shimmering reflections and the vertical, horizontal and diagonal patterns. Always going for the details.

Photo by Cecelia Feld

Inside, you exit a gallery, turn a corner, and catch a glimpse of the water outside. Lovely. Refreshing.

Photo by Cecelia Feld

Café Modern, with its elliptical dining room surrounded by water, is the place to take a break for coffee or lunch and “float” for a while.

Photo by Cecelia Feld

The man knew how to make us feel cool on a hot Texas day.

New Guy In Town

Posted on March 22, 2012 by cecelia

One of my favorite activities, when I’m not in my studio, is visiting museums. On a recent trip to Denver I went to the new Clyfford Still Museum. It is adjacent to the Denver Art Museum, its straight lines and solid mass contrasting sharply with the DAM’s angular walls. The Brad Cloepfil designed building houses almost 94% of Still’s total output (paintings, works on paper and sculptures).

Clyfford Still Museum - gallery

The path from representational depictions of farm workers in the 1920’s and 30’s to his fully realized Abstract Expressionist paintings of the 50’s until his death in 1980 are beautifully displayed, several to a gallery.

I was in college during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism. I was not as aware of Still and his contemporaries as maybe I should have been, (no Jackson Pollacks in my collection), but I was greatly influenced by one of the group, William Baziotes, who was my teacher at Hunter College. His discussions of how to “see” the world around us in terms of color, shape, line and texture influenced the direction my own art would take.

Clyfford Still "PH-272", 1950, detail

I have always said my work is about those “relationships.” As long as you understand that, you will be comfortable with the absence of object or narrative in my work.

Cecelia Feld #249 Sienna, acrylic painting, 69x53", 1983

Cecelia Feld #1209 This Must Be Your Lucky Day, collagraph collage, 8x11", 2009

See what I mean?