Urgent not to get caught up in the rush of Olympic cultural traffic we headed down to London a week and a half ago to take in a little Bauhaus enlightenment.
First up, the Barbican centre couldn’t have been beaten as the ideal location to showcase the pieces. For it’s audacious, individual and peerless which just adds to the uniqueness and impress factor of exhibition as a whole.
So, post a 10.45eees in the café where we chowed down on an oversized brownie (what a shame), an oversized muesli bar (gee the pain), two smoothies and a coffee, we headed to the 3rd floor to take in the show.
Luckily, we’d arrived for Opening so explored additional pleasure by being able to get up really close to each creation. Furthermore, the short text specifics furnished throughout the exhibition space was sufficiently detailed to provide the reader/visitor with a background to what they were currently perusing, though luckily not too academic that you’d feel overwhelmed. Rather, interested in perhaps learning a little more by way of purchasing the catalogue…or visiting Google once you made it home.
With my scribbling pad at the ready, it wasn’t hard to find some really beautifully produced items from the sculptures, paintings, fonts, photographs and textiles (not a the complete list either) on display, so many in fact I had to be ruthless and cut down my bullet pointed list below, otherwise I shan’t be getting dinner out on time, and you can just imagine the fallout that would generate.
So here’s a severely slashed ‘Top Appealers’ listing
- A rare treat, Wassily Kandinsky’s questionnaire to students querying their matching of basic geometric forms with one of the primary colours and requesting a rationale for their answer.
- Slightly sleep not preparing toys and puppets. My personal favourite, the Crowned Poet (1919) – very caesaresque, created by Paul Klee for his son.
- Farkas Molnar’s design for a single-family house 1922
- An exquisite chess set – Josef Hartwig (1922)
- Josef Albers’s photographs. At times a little wacky, however also some tremendously beautiful, look for ‘Pius and Schifra Ascona VIII’ (1930)
- Gunta Stoelzl – Five Choirs ‘Jacquered weave’ created in cotton, wool, rayon and silk (1928). 1.5m x 2.5m in size, though note these are my calculations and I’m probably not as talented at estimating as I should be.
So much is so right about this exhibition.
The final word…It was enlightening, really enlightening…so even if you do have to muscle through the Olympic cultural traffic you’ll be thrilled you did.
It finishes 12 August 2012
agentcatfish 