Arts and Crafts Movement & Bauhaus Movement

The Arts and Crafts Movement, that began in nineteenth-century Britain, and the Bauhaus movement, that started in Germany in the 1920s, had many goals in common. Both movements were interested in uniting all the arts and crafts and giving them equal dignity. Both movements were also deeply concerned with the role of the artist as worker and with the nature of work in general. Most importantly, both movements believed in beautiful design and well-made work as an enhancement of life. The importance of industrialized production and its aesthetic effects was a central question for both movements, but this was also the main point on which they disagreed. Both movements held that the industrialized production of goods had transformed the world. But, while the original Arts and Crafts movement largely rejected the machine age and all its productions, the Bauhaus embraced the industrial atmosphere of its time and attempted to transcend it. Both movements agreed that their times were aesthetically impoverished and both agreed that this was largely the result of the rise of industrial civilization. But the Bauhaus, coming later, recognized the necessity (and the value) of accepting the fact and making the most of it. The early Arts and Crafts Movement, on the other hand, hoped for a return to an idealized past.

The Arts and Crafts Movement extended in many directions and to many countries. The term has come to apply to a variety of styles that were sometimes related primaril

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's expression of joy in his Labour." This expression of joy could, according to the movement, resume its place in the work process as well as spreading its reflected glow among those who used the objects. The restoration of this joy in work could only be achieved, in the opinion of the movement leaders, by a return to individual craftsmanship. But, in this respect, Morris and his allies ran into the basic difficulty of craftsmanship in an industrialized society. Such objects are necessarily far more expensive than machine-produced goods since they are produced without the economies of scale provided by industry. They were, therefore, far too expensive for the "disadvantaged masses for whom they were intended." The Bauhaus group also held that the industrialization of Europe and America was the main problem artists faced in the early twentieth century. The Arts and Crafts Movement had expressed a longing for the past as a replacement for the present. But the Bauhaus group believed in accepting industrialization as a fact and making something good from it. The similarities of the movements are less remarkable when it is known that there was a strong link between them. Henry van de Velde, a Belgian painter, had come under

Category: Arts - A