Oskar Schlemmer - Body as Weapon

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Oskar Sch lemmer: Body as Weapon

Beau Rhee Department of Dance

Barnard College, Columbia University Spring 2007

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Abst ract “We need number, measure, and law as armor and as a weapon, lest we be swallowed up by chaos.”1 “To understand the essence of der Bau, creative construction. Like the concept of Bau itself, the stage is an orchestral complex which comes about only through the cooperation of many forces.”2

In the summer of 1928, the Bauhaus School in Dessau, Germany offered a course

entitled Human, or Mensch taught by Oskar Schlemmer. Often considered one of the

most influential art schools of the twentieth century, the Bauhaus flourished between 1919

and 1933. Pedagogically, artistically, and theoretically, the Bauhaus was a powerhouse

that produced and exported new modernist ideas about art, industry, architecture, theater,

and design. Here, Oskar Schlemmer taught the “Human” course, which combined

visual, biological, and philosophical studies to create a full understanding of the man as a

social, bodily, and spiritual being.3 Within the framework of Bauhaus pedagogy, the

existence of this class within the curriculum demonstrates the importance placed on the

human body. The artist and teacher most dedicated to this idea was Oskar Schlemmer. A

multifaceted artist and teacher who made paintings, sculptures, dances, and theater sets,

he centered his work around the human body and its interaction with the world. His

1 Oskar Schlemmer, “Perspektiven” address, quoted in Karin von Maur, “The Art of Oskar

Schlemmer,” in Oskar Schlemmer, ed. Arnold Lehman and Brenda Richardson, (Baltimore: The

Baltimore Art Museum, 1980) p. 120. 2 Oskar Schlemmer, “Theater (Bühne),” in Theater of the Bauhaus, ed. Walter Gropius and Arthur

Wensinger (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 81. 3 Oskar Schlemmer, Man: the Teaching Notes from the Bauhaus (Cambridge: M.I.T Press, 1972), p.

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closest companion and wife, Helena Tutien “Tut” Schlemmer, explains that the

“guiding concept of his life was the idea: man within space.”4 His paradigm of the

body is evident not only in his Mensch curriculum but also in his essays “Man and the

Art Figure”and “Theater,” as well as in his Bauhaus Dances, works that can be

thought of as distilled crystallizations of his work at the Bauhaus from 1921 to 1930.

Schlemmer’s dance-theater works reveal that his project was to create a new, modern

understanding of the human body. His views on the body are inherently paradoxical:

radically abstract yet deeply humane, intensely simplified yet subtly complex. He

emerges as an artist deeply influenced by early modernist concerns, yet also immensely

dedicated to finding timeless, universal forms that eloquently expressed the

contemporary human condition. A historically informed and visually specific analysis of

his choreographic and theoretical work at the Bauhaus offers an understanding of his

unified, ordered, and profound allegory of the modern human body that transcended the

chaos of the modern era. The allegory of the human body is ultimately one of identity.

4 Tut Schlemmer, ed., Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer (Middletown: Wesleyan University

Press, 1972), p. xii.

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Background

The dates of Schlemmer’s birth and death give us a brief glimpse of the range of

experiences that must have filled his life. Born in 1888, his life spanned one of the most

rapidly modernizing periods in European history. From 1914 to 1943, the year he died, he

lived through World War I, the Weimar Republic, and the first four years of World War II.

The rapid and chaotic modernization that took place doing his lifetime coincided with the

development of major artistic and intellectual movements. At a young age, shortly after

both his parents passed away, Oskar Schlemmer made a living for himself as an artisan,

working as a design craftsman in a wood-inlay factory.5 Because of his excellent work, he

received a scholarship at the Stuttgart Akademie der Bildenden Kunst (Stuttgart Academy

of the Plastic Arts), where he studied from 1906 to 1911.6 He developed an extremely

important and influential relationship with his teacher Adolf Hölzel, a painter linked to the

German Werkbund and the head of the Stuttgart Akademie. Hölzel’s theoretically rich

Werkbund philosophy concerning the aestheticization of the objects of everyday modern

life greatly influenced Schlemmer, giving him an early exposure to deeply theoretically

grounded art practices.7 He was one of Holzel’s star students; Oskar Schlemmer and

Willi Baumeister painted the murals for the main pavilion of the Cologne Werkbund

5 Oskar Schlemmer, ed. Arnold Lehman and Brenda Richardson, (Baltimore: The Baltimore Art

Museum, 1980) p. 195. 6 Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, p. 3. 7 Vernon Lidtke, “Twentieth Century Germany,” in Oskar Schlemmer, ed. Arnold Lehman and

Brenda Richardson (Baltimore: The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1986), p. 29.

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exhibition. The ideas of the German Werkbund involved, above all, a search for a unique

German style in terms of design aesthetic and theory in direct relationship with the rapid

industrialization of Germany at the turn of the twentieth century. Founded in 1907, the

Werkbund aspired to a “cooperation of art, industry and crafts in the ennoblement of

commercial activity by means of education, propaganda, and a united stand on pertinent

questions.”8 This cooperation must have been one of the foundational ideas that

Schlemmer encountered with Hölzel; an instance of early modernist thinking that

undoubtedly influenced his own practices. After studying at the Akademie, Schlemmer

founded the Neckarstraße Gallery, which was the first gallery to exhibit modern Cubist

paintings in Stuttgart, an early display of the dedication to Modernism that continued

throughout his life.9

From 1914 to 1918, he served in World War I. He served briefly in the field as a

soldier, but worked mainly as a mapmaker. He does not seem to have had a terribly

disturbing war experience. In a letter to his closest friend, Otto Meyer, he humorously

wrote of his mapmaking work (which involved aerial photography): “ I hope that

something positive comes of all these negatives.” 10 Although serving in the war no

doubt came with dark encounters, his mapmaking job gave him much time and freedom;

his journals are rich with entries on art movements throughout Europe (Futurism, Cubism,

8 Heinrich Waentig: Wirtscahft und Kunst, (Jena, 1909) p.47 quoted in Magdalena Droste, Bauhaus, (New York: Taschen, 2005) p. 12.

9 Tut Schlemmer, Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, p. 5. 10 Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, p. 60

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Dada) and on his own artistic identity and development.

In 1921, Schlemmer met Walter Gropius, the architect who was head of the

Bauhaus at the time, who hired him as a Master of Form of the Bauhaus, Weimar in 1921.

Schlemmer was joined that same year at the Bauhaus by Paul Klee. Although the

Bauhaus moved twice, once to Dessau in 1925 and to Berlin in 1930, Schlemmer

remained at the school until early 1930, when it came under attack from the increasingly

vociferous Nazis; three years later, it closed down in 1933.11 His most productive years

as an artist coincided with his career at the Bauhaus. Furthermore, his personal life

bloomed at the institution. He and Tut Schlemmer had three children there, and enjoyed a

rich social life surrounded by other Bauhaus families. Schlemmer was, after all, the

official party planner of the Bauhaus, planning some ingenious parties such as Silent

Night (where the rule of the party was to communicate by gesture and not words).

Although life was not monetarily plentiful at the Bauhaus, it was certainly intellectually and

emotionally satisfying for Schlemmer. Beginning in 1933, when Hitler came to power,

Schlemmer found it impossible to support himself and his family with his artwork alone

and struggled to find odd teaching and painting jobs. He died in Stuttgart in 1943.

To understand Schlemmer’s work, one must explore the world of the Bauhaus,

which existed from 1919 to 1933.“Bauhaus”means “House of Construction” in

11 Man and Mask, prod. and dir. Gottfried Just, 40 min., Bavaria Atelier GMBH Production , 1968,

videocassette.

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German. Based on the structure of Medieval communities where artisans lived and

worked together, the Bauhaus was conceived as a school that aimed to dissolve the

sharp line between artist and craftsman so that a whole range of artistic media would

exist together in unity. Walter Gropius, the author of the Bauhaus manifesto and the

founder of the school, famously stated that the Bauhaus community would work “without

a retreat into the ivory tower, and look for a new synthesis of art and modern

technology.”12 This progressive and ambitious institution gathered together artists/

teachers of many different movements; indeed, Kandinsky (a Transcendentalist) taught

painting; Laszlo Moholy-Nagy innovative photography and photomontage; Paul Klee color

and form classes; Marcel Breuer design, while de Stijl artist Theo van Doesburg played

an integral role in determining the course program.13 Unlike Paris, Weimar was a small

provincial city, so this kind of internationalism shows the appeal of Gropius’ ideas to a

wide range of artists, as well as the social and artistic openness of the Bauhaus. A very

early member of this community, Schlemmer was able to pursue his vision of a new

painting and a new theater through the intellectual and material resources of the Bauhaus.

The politics of the Bauhaus were decidedly left-wing and Socialist. The idea of

community that permeated Bauhaus art and life can be seen from its founding manifesto

written by Gropius. “Let us together create the new building of the future, which will be

12 Walter Gropius, “Introduction,”in Theater of the Bauhaus, ed. Walter Gropius and Arthur

Wensinger (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 7. 13 Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004), p. 123-124.

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everything in one form. Architecture and sculpture and painting.”14 In this manifesto,

building is not only an artistic and intellectual activity, but also a social one. Building

leveled the traditional distinction between bourgeois artist and proletarian worker and

united them under a new concept and activity. The Bauhaus hierarchy of apprentice and

master (student and teacher) reveals the sociological connections to the Medieval guilds

on which Gropius modeled the school. Furthermore, the social structure of the Bauhaus,

within the context of prevailing German cultural norms, which emphasized democratic

rather than hierarchical relationships, marks the school as a type of social experiment.

Schlemmer, though much more interested in intellectual and artistic endeavors

than political ones, was clearly aligned with the left in politics. In college he participated

in Socialist demonstrations; he supported a leveling of class structures and admired the

Russians for their revolution in 1917.15 “The German revolution [is] a pale imitation of the

Russian…; we shall be lucky to get a measly democracy” , he writes on January 25,

1919.16 One can find these socialist ideas in Bauhaus aesthetic philosophies; thus,

Schlemmer’s ideas and works must also be understood in the context of this leftist

political stance. Much of his work is imbued with a knowledge of Socialist ideas of

community as well as a knowledge of post-revolutionary ideas and art, such as

Constructivism.

14 Walter Gropius, Bauhaus Manifesto, quoted in Magdalena Droste, Bauhaus (New York: Taschen, 2005) p. 10.

15 Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, p. 65 16 Ibid.

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Gropius appointed Schlemmer as the director of the sculpture and mural studios

in 1921.17 Schlemmer initially worked on experimental theater with Lothar Schreyer, who

was the first director of the stage workshop, but later become the director of the Bauhaus

stage in 1923.18 His important and early work, The Triadic Ballet was conceived and

choreographed from 1918 to 1921, and premiered at the Stuttgart Landestheater in

1922.19 The Bauhaus Dances, choreographed between 1923 and 1928, are more

representative of the artistic and theoretical work that would occupy him while teaching at

the Bauhaus.20 A series of short dances consisting mainly of solos, duets, and trios, The

Bauhaus Dances are named simply, with titles such as Gesture Dance, Hoop Dance, Pole

Dance, and Space Dance. Although Schlemmer remained a painter throughout his life,

dance was a medium that allowed him to explore his primary theoretical and artistic

interest: the human figure. Furthermore, dance seems to have marked an artistic

progression from the two dimensional medium of painting to a more spatially oriented

practice. In a letter to his great friend Otto Meyer, written from a battlefield in February

1918, Schlemmer states: “ I certainly see great possibilities in the realm of ballet and

pantomime… I believe this independent branch of the theatrical arts will provide the

17 Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, p. 93. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Debra McCall, “Reconstructing Schlemmer’s Bauhaus Dances,” in Oskar Schlemmer, ed.

Arnold Lehman and Brenda Richardson (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1986), p. 150.

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impetus for a renewal.”21 Schlemmer was not a trained ballet dancer, nor was he

particularly interested in dance as a young man, but this newfound interest quickly

bloomed into a life of its own, and by 1927, he joined Rudolf Laban at the Magdeburg

Dance Congress.22 From the years 1923 onward, he also began to write and lecture more

about dance and theater. Essays such as “Man and the Art Figure” (Kunstfigur) and

“Theater” (Bühne) are examples of how he continually tried to theorize his developing

choreographic ideas. As Schlemmer’s work matured with time, his visions formed a

choreographic vocabulary that existed as a theatrical embodiment of Bauhaus concerns.

More importantly, though, his choreographic language also signified Schlemmer’s ideas

about his understanding of the human body as a vessel to creating a modern allegory of

human identity.

21 Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, p. 49. 22 McCall, “Reconstructing Schlemmer’s Bauhaus Dances”, p.150.

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The Bauhaus Dances : Form and Con ten t

In the spirit of keeping the art at the center of study, I would like to first examine

Schlemmer’s The Bauhaus Dances. This set of short dances was choreographed between

1923 and 1928, and performed at the Bauhaus theaters. The Bauhaus Dances best exemplify a

unique dark humor that Schlemmer employed to illuminate certain aspects of the modern human

condition. This humor in the choreography is a strategy that is both socially and politically

pointed. The critical responses to The Bauhaus Dances, though, rarely comment on this aspect

of Schlemmer’s work. I aim to provide a re-interpretation of The Bauhaus Dances by focusing

on the trios.

The Bauhaus Dances refers to the group of dances Schlemmer choreographed while

teaching the Bauhaus Theater Workshop from years 1923 to 1929. The main known dances

among these are nine dances comprised of four solos, four trios, and one chorus piece that were

reconstructed by Debra McCall and Andreas Weininger in 1982, as well as by Albert Flocon,

Ludwig Grote, Tut Schlemmer, and Hannes Winkler in 1968. This earlier reconstruction was

made into the video Man and Mask, which is the basis of all visual analysis in this paper.

Although his Triadic Ballet is the most well known and more often reconstructed work, The

Bauhaus Dances are his later, more distilled works that best reflect his theories and work at the

Bauhaus Theater Workshop.

Walter Gropius thought of closing down this department for financial reasons, but

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Schlemmer protested loudly against this decision, and in 1927 the theater reappeared officially

on the Bauhaus Dessau campus’ roster of classes.23 Schlemmer worked intensively with the

students who took Theater classes from 1927 to 1929. Some of the students he worked with were

Lux Feininger, Andreas Weininger, Werner Siedhoff, Walter Kaminsky, Manda von Kreibig, and

Karla Grosch. Although none were trained in ballet from an early age, the Bauhaus offered

gymnastics and movement classes that the theater students were strongly encouraged to take.

In 1929, this group of Theater Workshop students and Schlemmer made a tour of Germany and

Switzerland, receiving a large amount of success and attention. When Hannes Meyer took over

Walter Gropius’ position, however, the budget for theater was reduced. Schlemmer had to give

up his elaborate costumes and sets and the students formed an extremely political, Piscatorian

theater called The Young Group which was heavily inspired by Soviet theater and minimally by

Schlemmer’s work.24

What seems particularly alarming about the reception of Debra McCall’s 1982

reconstruction of Schlemmer’s Bauhaus Dances in the United States is the flat consensus on

the abstraction and metaphysical qualities of Schlemmer’s theater that seems to drain the

cultural importance of Schlemmer’s work. In a New York Times review on October 31, 1982,

Anna Kisselgoff does little more than situate Schlemmer within a rather uninteresting gloss of the

Bauhaus and suggests that “it would be useful to see the metaphysical dimension behind

23 Magdalene Droste, Bauhaus p. 158 24 Magdalene Droste, Bauhaus p. 186.

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Schlemmer's own abstract dance theater.”25 D.S. Moyinan’s article on the Bauhaus Dances

published in the Autumn 1984 issue of The Drama Review also disappointingly does little more

than quote McCall and describe her reconstruction process, rather than offering any historical or

thematic interpretation of the work. An article by Susanne Lahusen published in Dance Research

in Autumn 1986 concludes rather anticlimactically with this point: “Schlemmer had sensed that

his abstract style was too avant-garde for the dance world of his time.”26 If Lahusen had

considered that Nijinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Malevich’s Victory Over the Sun both

premiered in 1913, or that The Tradic Ballet premiered in 1922, she would have understood that

The Bauhaus Dances were in no way abstract works that sprung out of the blue, but were

developed from well established modernist ideas about the body and theater. McCall gives a

slightly more sophisticated reading of his work when she speaks of the “spirit of play,

playfulness of the characters. They’re like big adult-sized puppets. Each of them has character

and temperament.”27

What takes the Bauhaus Dances beyond the level of conceptual visual play with abstract

forms is the level at which Schlemmer engages with a dark humor that creates a space that is at

once orderly but inexplicably dangerous, a dark humor that brings to life characters that seem to

25 Anna Kisselgoff, “They Created Dance Works at the Bauhaus, too” The New York Times. October 31, 1982.

26 Susanne Lahusen. “Oskar Schlemmer: Mechanical Ballets?” Dance Research: The Journal of

the Society for Dance Research, Vol. 4, No. 2. (Autumn, 1986), p. 76. 27 D. S. Moynihan. “Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus Dances: Debra McCall’s Reconstructions”

The Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 28, No. 3, Reconstruction. (Autumn, 1984). p. 51.

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hide behind puffy protective costumes and beautiful (but often frightening) masks. I argue that

abstraction of the body is merely a means to create a body of works that point to the vulnerability

of the modern human condition. Although the Bauhaus Dances do have solos, the longer three-

minute pieces are always trios. Rather than exploring themes of an individual man finding his

identity, or a relationship between two people, Schlemmer chooses a number that he believes

implies the collective, or the larger social matrix. When asked why he named his longer work The

Triadic Ballet, Schlemmer explained: “Because three is a supremely important, prominent

number, within which egotistic one and dualistic contrast are transcended, giving way to the

collective (July 5, 1926).”28 It is within this collective, then, that Schlemmer’s humor operates

at its most incisive and critical level.

The costumes most frequently worn in The Bauhaus Dances are padded uniforms that

hide the natural contour of the individual body and make each dancer appear as though the

body were a prototype. According to Andreas Weininger and Lux Feininger, the costumes were

made of colored linen and quilting.29 Usually, dancers are differentiated by different colored

costumes. The curved shape of the unitard makes it impossibly to differentiate the gender of the

performers. These curved prototypes of bodies are found in Schlemmer’s painting as well. On

canvas, his figures (regardless of gender) have bulging chests and hips; often the only

differentiation from one figure to the other is found in the hairstyle or clothing. For the most part,

28 Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, p. 196. 29 Moynihan, D.S. “Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus Dances: Debra McCall’s Reconstruction,” p

55.

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the nude figure remains a set of distilled, curved, non-gendered forms. Most importantly, on

stage, the element of padding both humorously and ominously functions as a protective layer

from the outside world. Clothing functions in society as a both functional and cultural item. On

stage, however, costumes take on a mostly aesthetic role, beyond the need to allow movement.

It is a darkly humorous statement when a costume functions primarily as a protective layer; it

signals that the space outside of the body present both physical and psychological danger.

Schlemmer’s constumes were directly inspired by Russian Constructivist clothing experiments

and costumes. Because of Schlemmer’s admiration of the Russians as well as the influence of

Constructivism on Bauhaus thinking, it is extremely likely that Constructivism influenced his

costume choices. The aesthetic of Schlemmer’s padded body suits matches the unitard suits

or prozhodezha worksuits that the Constructivists wore, originally designed by Varvara

Stepanova for Rodchenko.30

Schlemmer’s masks are also important to consider, especially when determining the

type of subjectivity the performer on stage is projecting. As the costumes do to the body,

Schlemmer’s masks reduce individual features from the human face and make the face of the

performer appear as a type. Rather than, as in the tradition of European theater and opera,

which conveys the persona of an individual character, Schlemmer explores the possibility of an

establishment of a type of figure that could serve as a metaphor for a broad range of people. In

30 Christine Lodder, Russian Constructivism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983) p. 212.

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this case, Schlemmer’s knowledge of non-European theater traditions significantly influenced

his emphasis on the type over the individual; he states that his “models…can be found in the

Javanese, the Japanese, and the Chinese theater, rather than in the European theater of

today.”31

In terms of movement, Schlemmer often employs humor as a way to comment critically

on the social and political conditions of his time, with different emphases and concerns

according to each dance. The extreme seriality of Schlemmer’s costumes and the seemingly

restricted movement all function as results of Schlemmer’s attempt to show an ever more

frightening and controlling society where human weakness, deception, violence is augmented by

the outside world. The relevance the themes Schlemmer addressed with his Bauhaus Dances

have to our own society is surprising and incisive. Among the five trios, I will be discussing four

dances: Space Dance, Gesture Dance, Game of Bricks, and Flats Dance.

The cues in Space Dance, given to the red dancer by the blue dancer’s forty-five

degree rotation, begins a sequence in which this forty-five degree rotation by one dancer cues

another dancer into movement. This cue is the center around which the dancers’ relationships

twist and turn; the sequence of fifteen cues that constitute this dance creates extremely

interesting timing sequences that play with the different speeds in which each of the dancers

move. For example, at one moment, the red dancer gives the cue for both yellow and blue to

31 Oskar Schlemmer, “Theater (Bühne),” in Theater of the Bauhaus, ed. Walter Gropius and Arthur

Wensinger (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) p. 101.

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move; because yellow moves about three times faster than blue, yellow ends up traversing three

times as much space. Yellow takes interesting diagonal patterns while the blue dancer plods on

a straight line. Through speed and patterning, Schlemmer is able to use contrast and humor in

his work. One extremely interesting moment is towards the end, when a cue creates a

dangerously close collision between the three moving bodies, but the respective speeds in

which they move stops the possible collision or contact. This moment is at once eminently

dangerous but also very humorous, as it seems as though the whole system of the cue that the

piece rests on will ultimately fail; however, the feeling of suspense is overcome by a prevailing

calm. This moment that almost breaks the calm that Schlemmer sets up is both humorous and

critical. This humor is dependent on a tension between a greater order maintaining its structure

and the possibility of its complete demise. Furthermore, this moment calls to attention the

disconnect between the dancers on stage; this greater order seems one that unites the dancers

together in terms of their tasks, but separates them in terms of human contact.

Gesture Dance is another trio, with three characters who wear separate colors-

yellow, blue, and red. Yellow opens the piece, striding aggressively on stage from stage right.

After hopping around his seat, he sits. Then Red enters from the upstage right, walking a little

slower, but with purpose. He does four grand battements around his seat, then sits down.

Strangely enough, then Blue enters from stage left, dragging his body with his arms in a push up

position and then hops in front of his bench. At this moment, all three make a strange ‘zzzzz’

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noise and sit down in unison. Then begins a contorted, strange conversation. Yellow speaks in a

hysterically high whisper to Red, behind a secretive hand. Both burst out laughing, hitting their

hands on the ground and throwing their heads back to express their glee. They look at each

other, and rub their hands together as though plotting some sort of scheme. Red leans over and

then tells something to Blue. Upon hearing what Red says, both Red and Blue sway in laughter,

then their laughter escalates until they laugh in a violently percussive rhythm while bouncing on

their chairs. When the laughter stops, the three get up and swirl together in movement. A whistle

blows from afar; they separate and walk for a while in a circle. Then, Yellow signals for the other

two to stop. They stop, and the three link hands, and perform a fairly cheerful maypole dance.

Then, they go off as they came in, Red and Yellow exit stage right, and Blue to stage left.

This piece functions as a comment on the secrecy and unreliability of human

communication, especially those conversations that build power structures or hierarchies

between people. Communication never happens within this collective; rather, it is a decree that

unites these three in movement, whether it is the whistle or Yellow’s gesture. By the end of the

piece, it is Yellow who holds the power over Red and Blue. One could read this as a piece that

shows how one person can essentially construct his own power over a group of people. This is,

of course, a frightening and incisive insight- probably coming from Schlemmer’s experience

with the chaos and corruption of Weimar Republic politics.

Already, an analysis of Schlemmer’s two trios show that he was not an aesthete

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concerned only with making beautiful abstract forms. Behind what seems only playful and

inpenetrable mechanical gestures, there is a certain severity and alarming seriousness. The two

other trios, Game of Bricks and Flats Dance also address issues of identity and power

construction.

Game of Bricks is an architectural piece; one can almost imagine the architecturally

inclined faculty at the Bauhaus viewing the piece with great glee. In a way, this piece seems to

presuppose Judson Dance Theater’s task-oriented performances. The main action involves the

three dancers arranging large cubes in various arrangements. Each of the cube’s six sides are

painted red, yellow, blue, white, black, and grey. The piece opens with all three primary colors of

the cubes equally displayed. Throughout the beginning of the piece, though, the number of

cubes corresponding to each character seems to signify the amount of control or power that

character has. The title Game of Bricks could be seen as a metaphor for how construction and

architecture is a domain (or game) of control. The conflict occurs when Yellow and Blue decide

to collaborate and build a structure together. They attempt to coalesce Red to give them more

cubes to assist them in building their structure. However, Red refuses to conform and

surprisingly, Red ends up ordering the other two around. Red’s movements are brave and

charismatic. Under Red’s control, the three build a pyramidal structure, which they push to

rotate when completed. The rotation shows the audience that the structure represents all three

colors equally! The piece seems a hopeful comment on leadership- that when the right person

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holds power over a group of people, a collective can make a beautiful and equally

representative structure.

Flats Dance is perhaps the darkest of the five trios. Rather than wear different

colored costumes, three dancers wear grey padded costumes and wear white gloves and white

masks. The masks are flat and have holes as eyes and a line for a mouth. The audience does not

see the bodies of the dancers until the end; in the beginning all one sees of the bodies are the

hands, feet, and masks of the dancer floating around the colored planes. The field of movement

is on a plane just as flat as the masks the dancers wear. They hide behind the red, yellow, and

blue planes, playing a game of hide and seek. Individuality has been wiped out- the shifting and

oscillating planes comprise a beautiful visual puzzle. At the end, the game of hide and seek is

over, and the three grey bodies reveal themselves. At this moment, the dancer on stage left

shoots the one who stands center. This dancer falls, and the dancer stage right catches the

fallen body. The sheer unexpected violence after the neutrality and abstraction of the shifting

colored planes is shocking. This is a comment on the danger of revealing identity in a society

where people remain hidden behind identically reproduced masks, a society in which revealing

who you are can potentially lead to death.

If indeed Schlemmer’s main concern is, as Tut Schlemmer puts it, “man and

space”, than what kind of man and what kind of space does his work suggest? Upon a closer

reading of the way in which humor operates in The Bauhaus Dances, it seems impossible to

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write off Schlemmer’s ideas of man and space as inapplicable aesthetic theorizations, or as

Kisselgoff, the New York Times author, suggested in 1982, to understand his work through the

“metaphysical dimension behind [his] abstract dance theater.” The space on stage in

Schlemmer’s dances, organized by the neat grid on stage, oscillates and shivers between a

rigid order and unexpected moments of madness and chaos. It is not as though the organized

grid space of the space were just a clean blank slate; rather, it is textured with an immanent

sense of danger and unpredictability. One must read Schlemmer’s conception of the body,

then, revealing a similar type of oscillation. Even if the literature on his work emphasizes the

abstract form of his costumes and movement, we must consider what paradigm of the body the

costumes and movement construct. Similarly to the stage space, the costumes at once hide and

heighten the characteristics of the characters on stage, illuminating often beautiful and often

traumatic insights.

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The Bauhaus Dances: Dance and Architecture

When analyzing the two most iconic Schlemmer essays, one sees that the oscillation

between rigidity and chaos in Schlemmer’s pieces stemmed from a very specific approach to

theater. That is, he theorized theater through two seemingly opposed strategies- dance and

architecture. He not only theorizes the theater but also the human body through these two

fundamentally contrasting disciplines. The body seems theorized and rendered somewhere

between a bodily organism and a rigid structure.

In the essay “Man and the Art Figure”, Schlemmer discusses the dancer as the

central figure in the theater: he opens by stating that “the history of the theater is the history of

the transfiguration of the human form.”32 In the essay “Theater, however, Schlemmer states

that “the stage is above all an architectonic spatial organism where all things happening to it

and within it exist in a spatially conditioned relationship.” One could see both his writing and

his work, then, as embodiments of the very conflict between the organic and the mechanic. This

very tension is a historical question of Schlemmer’s time, apparent in Dada and Surrealism

movements, in which artists questioned the very basis of human subjectivity in relationship to

increasing mechanization. The Dadaists were interested in the notion of chance operated art

making, where the external system of events determined the work of art as opposed to the

subjectivity of the artist. Marcel Duchamps’ notes on the readymade best exemplify this

32 Oskar Schlemmer, “Man and the Art Figure,” in Theater of the Bauhaus, ed. Walter Gropius and

Arthur Wensinger (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) p. 17.

23

attitude:

By planning for a moment to come (on such a day, such a date, such a minute), “to inscribe a readymade”…The important thing then is just this matter of timing, this snapshot effect, like a speech delivered on no matter what occasion but at such and such an hour. It is a kind of rendezvous. Naturally inscribe that date, hour, minute on the readymade as information.33

It is as though the work of art has become a mechanical object, one that can be produced

instantaneously provided the conditions allow. Photography also played an important role in both

Dadaist and Surrealist discourse. Duchamp mentions the “snapshot effect” in the quote

above, pointing to the change in artistic process the mechanical tool of photography had to the

process of art making. Walter Benjamin’s famous Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

comments on the fact that the reproducibility of photography strips away the notion of a work of

art’s distinct and unique sense of aura and cult value, and instead “the camera intervenes

with the resources of its lowering and liftings, its interruptions and isolations, its extensions and

accelerations…the camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to

unconscious impulses.”34 That is, the mechanical often replaces, magnifies, or surpasses the

human consciousness and thus affects the very state of human subjectivity.

It is Schlemmer’s exploration of this tension, then, between the mechanic and the

human in his choreographic work that provides rich material for a formal analysis of the

choreography not only in terms of content, as was explored in Chapter One, but also in terms of

33 Marcel Duchamp, Salt Seller: The Writings of Marcel Duchamp (New York: Oxford University Press,

1973) p 32. 34 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations trans. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1968) p. 237.

24

the very physical conception of the human body. Beyond the dark content and sarcastic humor

of the piece, the body itself seems to hinge between either extremely mechanic and automatic

movements or extremely recognizable everyday human gestures. Often, the sharp distinction

between machinelike movements and human gesture disintegrates, and thus the very distinction

between human and machine seems to disintegrate. In Gesture Dance, the sardonic laughter is

executed with such rhythmic certainty that it seems to almost reference the movement of a

machine. Or, in Game of Bricks, as the dancers move the bricks around the space, their

movement is so extremely controlled that the every day gestures seem to oscillate between

automatism and familiarity. To Schlemmer, the body is both an organic and mechanical entity

and is characterized both by its own internal laws but also its response to external space.

In Schlemmer’s case, then, the external space surrounding the organic body

seems particularly rigid and structured, limiting the body to certain square or linear types of

movement. This conception of space can be understood as his architectural understanding of

theatrical space. The Bauhaus was an institution dedicated to architecture. However, many of

the architectural ideas discussed at the Bauhaus can be traced back to the earlier Werkbund

and De Stijl movements. After all, Walter Gropius, who trained originally with the German

Werkbund group, was the director of the school from 1919 to 1927. Theo van Doesberg, a key

figure in the De Stijl movement, also taught at the Bauhaus from 1922 to 1924.

The iconic Werkbund building, Fagus Shoe Factory from 1912, designed by Walter

25

Gropius, is a coining example of the Werkbund architecture that directly influenced Bauhaus

building aesthetics and, ultimately, Schlemmer’s own conception of space. The Fagus Shoe

Factory was one of the first explorations in architectural building in exclusively glass and steel.

Though this aesthetic has now become the prototype for commercial skyscraper building, at the

time of the Factory’s conception, glass was thought of as an almost transcendental material

that could transform a dark, damp interior space into a bright, transparent one. This idea was

particularly powerful in that glass could transform the usually miserable working environment of a

factory into an almost pleasurable one. At the same time, though, the steel grid emphasized the

mechanical, industrial, disciplined structure of the building as well as the very internal

mechanisms of the factory. The space was both open to external light but at the same time was

cohered by the intense internal logic and rigor of the grid. The constant reiteration of the grid

within the factory, then, could be seen as an architectural quotation relating the space of the

factory to a greater idea of order, industry, and discipline. In this way, the structure is not a self-

contained whole, but the logic of an external order determines the behavior of this structure.

One could look to De Stijl works to see further explorations of breaking apart an internally

cohesive architecture. The De Stijl movement was centralized in Holland and took root by about

1917. De Stijl simply means “The Style,” and the aim of the movement was to create a

common language of contemporary material forms that were appropriate for the times. Some of

the key figures included Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, and Gerrit Thomas Rietveld. From

26

one of their proclamations: “Under the supremacy of materialism, handicraft reduced men to

the level of machines; the proper tendency for the medium (in the sense of cultural development)

is as the unique medium of the very opposite, social liberation.”35 Indeed, when one looks at an

early Gerrit Thomas Rietveld design Red/Blue Chair from 1918, one sees the rigid order of the

grid established by earlier movements dispersed by what seems to be a liberation of the grid

from predictability. The back of the seat is a floating diagonal plane; the black wood planks that

hold the chair together are painted yellow at the ends, creating a further sense of movement. It is

as though this design is not simply reiterating the order of the grid, but is emphasizing the

movement possible in the reconstruction or retheorization of the grid. Theo van Doesburg’s

Spatial Diagram for a House from 1924 is another example of the De Stijl aesthetic where a

predictable organization of planes breaks down, and the planes seem to hover asymmetrically

between each other as though caught in motion. It is as though a greater logic of forms cannot

be pinned down and stabilized; rather, the aesthetic of the De Stijl points to the possibility of

movement and change within a seemingly closed system.

The space Schlemmer creates on stage, then, can be related to both Werkbund and

De Stijl philosophies. Especially in The Bauhaus Dances, Schlemmer literally draws a white grid

on the stage that rigorously orders the movement and relationships of the dancers on stage.

However, the movement makes apparent that this grid is there to call attention to the moments in

35 William Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (New York: Phaidon, 1996) p. 156.

27

which the order of this grid is shattered. In Schlemmer’s work, then, the body reacts to this

architectural space in a both critical and complicit way. Often it seems as though the body is

simply an organism repeating the rules of the space around it, like a factory worker constantly

repeats the hierarchical logic of a factory. Amidst this passive repetition, Schlemmer employs

everyday gestural movement that eerily calls to attention the human subject hidden deep within

the bulky cushions of the costume, the seemingly endlessly repetitive following of the grid. The

body is at once a receptacle that appears pre-coded to follow certain motions and at once a

being with spontaneous communicative impulses. This dual subjectivity of the body is a powerful

method of criticism that extends beyond the immediate humor discussed in chapter one.

That is, Schlemmer’s conscious decision to incorporate a discussion on space into his

dances could be seen as a powerful tool that engages dance with a discourse on space and

subjectivity. That is, space could be thought of as a physical structure, but space could also be

thought of as the interaction between bodies and physical structures. Thus, it seems that to

Schlemmer, dance is a powerful medium in which this interaction can be fully explored. Indeed,

Schlemmer states in his essay Theater that “The stage is above all an architectonic spatial

organism where all things happening to it and within it exist in a spatially conditioned

relationship.”36 The very phrase “architectonic spatial organism” defines the stage as both

a mechanic and organic space that obeys architectural laws as well as the laws of a natural

36 Oskar Schlemmer, “Theater (Bühne),” in Theater of the Bauhaus, ed. Walter Gropius and Arthur

Wensinger (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) p. 85

28

organism. Most importantly, though, space determines man’s movement, as Schlemmer

describes space as a “spatial-linear web which will have a decisive influence on the man who

moves about within it…the human figure becomes a space-bewitched creature, so to speak.”37

Schlemmer understands choreography and movement itself as a primarily spatial

idea and activity; what determines movement first and foremost is the human figure’s

engagement with their external space. Thus, the very origin and motivation for subject’s

movements does not seem to come from an internal space of expression but rather the

movements stem from the subject’s interaction with the space around them. In a way, this

motivation of movement points to an externalized subjectivity, where circumstance, space, a

logic outside of the human subject seems to play just as much of a role in determining movement

as much as the logic of the human body.

This conceptualization of the human subject as both an internally determined but

also externally determined entity is in no way a simply pessimistic outlook that renders the body

as simply passive to its environment. If anything, this seems to stem from Schlemmer’s belief in

the power and possibility of the theater in redetermining use and thoughts on space and

mechanization. In Man and the Art Figure, Schlemmer declares:

Utopia? It is indeed astonishing how little has been accomplished so far in this direction. This materialistic and practical age has in fact lost the genuine feeling for play and for the miraculous. Amazed at the flood of technological advance, we accept these wonders of utility as being already perfected art

37 Ibid, p. 92.

29

form, while actually they are only prerequisites for its creation.38

That is, Schlemmer’s conception of space within his Bauhaus Dances could be seen as an

attempt in his part to approach mechanized space as an aesthetic tool to create new theater

works. Similarly to the De Stijl embrace of the grid as a visual design tool that could be used to

mobilize movement, Schlemmer seems to incorporate the rigidity of the grid in his theater

space in order to mobilize a new kind of movement and theater that could take mechanization

beyond utility and into the realm of creation.

The four types of transformations of the human body that Schlemmer proposes in his

essay Man and the Art Figure are examples of a mobilization of mechanization as a tool for

creation. Looking at these four transformations, one can see the direct correlation between

Schlemmer’s choreography and his engagement with architecture, industry, and

mechanization. Schlemmer defines the first type, ambulant architecture, as “cubical forms

transferred to the human shape: head, torso, arms, legs are transformed into spatial-cubical

constructions.”39 This conception of the body literally truncates the body into architectural

forms; at the same time, this truncation provides the basis for a new type of mechanical bodily

movement. All other three types of transformation, technical organism, the marionette, and

dematerialization, point to a certain mechanistic property of the body that is then accentuated. In

a way, this approach in interpreting the material properties through mechanical laws emphasizes

38 Oskar Schlemmer, “Man and the Art FIgure” in Theater of the Bauhaus, ed. Walter Gropius and

Arthur Wensinger (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) p. 31 39 Ibid, p. 26.

30

the possibility of order that the body holds. And if, as Schlemmer states “we need number,

measure, and law as armor and as a weapon,

lest we be swallowed up by chaos,”40 these models of orderly bodily transformations

could be seen as Schlemmer’s constructive theoretical weapon. These transformations

show us that Schlemmer’s original conceptions of body and space, which stemmed from the

unity of the mechanical study of architectural space and organic study of the human body, were

models that provided a contemporary and philosophically rich understanding of the body. This

kind of understanding, then, could change the very subjectivity of the viewer by providing a

sense of order and law to the body and space.

40 Oskar Schlemmer, “Perspektiven” address, quoted in Karin von Maur, “The Art of Oskar

Schlemmer,” in Oskar Schlemmer, ed. Arnold Lehman and Brenda Richardson, (Baltimore: The

Baltimore Art Museum, 1980) p. 120.

31

Mensch : The Human F igu re and Iden t i t y

When one looks at Schlemmer’s syllabus for his Mensch course of 1928, one

sees an artist and a thinker who was seeking to create and preserve an intact human

identity in an increasingly absurd and chaotic world. Walter Benjamin eloquently explains

the collision of modernity and humanity as one of contradiction:

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience by tactical warfare, economic experience by inflation, bodily experience by mechanical warfare, moral experience by those in power. A generation that had gone to school on a horse drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothing remained unchanged but the clouds, and beneath these clouds, in a field of force of destructive torrents and explosions, was the tiny, fragile, human body.41

At a time in when the human being and the human body were constantly threatened by

change and destruction, Schlemmer’s course put forward a method to organize the

human experience in a way contemporary to modern society. Compared to the empathy

and pathos of Benjamin’s description of the contradiction of experience, Schlemmer’s

syllabus is bold, ambitious, and ordered:

Mensch/Human : Compulsory for the third semester, 2 weekly period, 21 double periods in all. It is essential for the ‘new life’ , which should express itself as a modern feeling about the world and life, that man should be understood as a cosmic being. His conditions of existence, his relationships with the natural and artificial environment, his mechanism and organism, his material, spiritual, and intellectual image; in short, man as a bodily and spiritual being is a necessary and important subject of instruction.42

41 Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller,” Illuminations, trans Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken

Books, 1968) p. 84. 42 Oskar Schlemmer, Man: Teaching Notes from the Bauhaus. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972) p. 26.

32

The syllabus was meticulously planned for twenty-one periods, in which he taught

one visual studio class, one biology class, and then one philosophy class. This three-

class cycle was repeated with different content seven times. He gave biology lectures

such as “Respiration and Circulation,” philosophy lectures such as “Materialism,

Realism, and Idealism,” and formal visual studios such as “Man and Space.”43

Taught in one of Schlemmer’s last years at the Bauhaus, this syllabus gives a

comprehensive list of subjects that Schlemmer believed were the most essential ways to

understand modern man. The order in which the cycles were repeated: form, biology, and

philosophy suggest how Schlemmer conceived his theories of the human body. His

dedication to the materiality of the body was a reflection of Bauhaus formalism, which

centered around the study of the materiality of a medium before going into theoretical

discussion. For example, when making a wood sculpture, the unique qualities of the wood

would be the basis for the artwork. Schlemmer states that in his “ form” classes, he

wants his students to explore “ the ways of movement, the choreography of the everyday,

organized movement in gymnastics and dance.”44 The study of the mechanics and

kinetics of movement (or dance) lead to studies of the science of the body as well as the

philosophies of the human body and being. Whether paintings, dances, or writings,

Schlemmer’s most serious works are based on studies on the unique material quality of

43 Ibid, p. 29-30. 44 Ibid., p 26.

33

the body. However, his ideas theorize this body in ways that go beyond its physical

qualities, incorporating philosophy, biology, and even psychology. Thus, for Schlemmer,

human form is a method for him to get to theorization and philosophy. Rather than being

the means and the end, his artistic and choreographic works could be seen as a means

to communicate his theory or philosophy of the body. Working backward, then, one can

analyze the theories of the body in his class Mensch to ask what meaning they can hold

for us today as contemporary thinkers and artists.

Often Schlemmer’s work is written off simply as an interesting mechanical dance

experiment; However, to fully understand Schlemmer’s seemingly blind dedication to

finding order, abstraction, and universal laws in the human body, one must locate his

work within the upheaval, change, and trauma of the Weimar Republic in Germany. That

is, his writing and choreography must be situated and interpreted politically. If, as he

states, “we need number, measure, and law as armor and as a weapon, lest we be

swallowed up by chaos” 45, he is asserting that his work itself is a weapon against the

crises of modernity, such as displacement, homelessness, rupture, and trauma. When

one looks beyond the organized precision of his public writing (such as “Man and the

Art Figure” or the “Mensch” syllabus) and examines his personal journal entries, the

45 Oskar Schlemmer, “Perspektiven” address, quoted in Karin von Maur.“The Art of Oskar

Schlemmer,” in Oskar Schlemmer, ed. Arnold Lehman and Brenda Richardson, (Baltimore: The

Baltimore Art Museum, 1980) p. 120.

34

prevalence of his dark humor recording experiences of trauma or displacement cannot be

ignored, especially before and after his years at the Bauhaus. In the periods before he

joined the Bauhaus, he often mentions the shattering of tradition in early modernist art

and intellectual movements; later, he often writes of his growing sense of emotional

displacement within his own country. In the early period, he is at once overwhelmed and

excited by the possibilities of change: “all traditions are shattered. The tradition of

Classical Antiquity has been toppled. Artists are surveying the field…once you reject

classical painting and art, the sky is the limit.”46 Although one cannot superficially link

his earlier work with his later experience, one can approach his work with a sense of his

disposition towards radical change and displacement. His theories, then, can be read as

artistic and psychological paradigms of subjectivity that helped both himself and others

at an attempt to have a sense of internal cohesion in an externally fractured system.

The question is, then, what kind of strategies did he use to create the paradigms

of subjectivity that he discussed? At one extremely important level, Schlemmer created a

historiography of the body throughout time. I am using the word “historiography” here

in the way that Keith Jenkins defines history in his book Rethinking History:“history/

historiography is an inter-textual, linguistic construct.” 47 That is, Schlemmer constructed

a distinct historical narrative of the human body by drawing together previously unrelated

46 Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, p. 23. 47 Keith Jenkins, “What History Is,” in Re-Thinking History (London: Routledge, 1991), p 5.

35

texts and thinkers. He draws from a wide range of historical artists and writers to base his

course on: Albrecht Durer’s studies in bodily proportions, Egyptian theories of the body,

as well as Polycles, the Greek thinker who established the canon of the human body,

Leonardo da Vinci, and Fritsch the anatomist. Schlemmer seems to operate in a method

that is the direct opposite method of the Dadaists, who rejected history and theorized that

the future should be opened up in the form of continual breaks rather than by continuity.

In his diary he speaks of the Dadaists: “Arp and the others in Zurich-a lot of it seems to

be hollow decoration.”48 What Schlemmer seems most opposed to is art that is simply

reactionary to its environment. Schlemmer was an artist who stated that “even taking

one step is a most grave and serious event,”49 or that each small step could hold great

meaning. It seems that the historiography of the body he presented to students was a

way of assigning great historical and philosophical significance to the body. The

significance of the body, however, is not an external knowledge.

He seems to propose that this understanding and study of history is integral to a

formation of identity. When he states in his syllabus that “ it is essential for the ‘new

life’ , which should express itself as a modern feeling about the world and life, that man

should be understood as a cosmic being,” he emphasizes the personal necessity he

sees in taking this course. Here is the crux of the significance of this course; Schlemmer

48 Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, p. 69 49 Ibid.

36

proposes that a visual, biological, and philosophical study of the human body is

fundamental to the very subjectivity of an individual. That is, the changes in the modern

world are so drastic that a shift in the conceptual understanding of the body is the basis

for a sound, grounded subjectivity.

Schlemmer’s theories of the body, then, are based on the idea of a body that is

whole within itself. The body conveys cosmic and universal ideas when looked at in

isolation, as long as it remains within the physical laws of the world around it. Rather than

looking at what the body might be in relationship to other bodies, or looking at states of

the body that change and mutate on a day-to-day basis, such as the processes of aging,

dying, or pain, Schlemmer theorizes what I will call a simulacrum of the body. In the

essay “Plato and the Simulacrum” Deleuze states that in Western culture “we have

proceeded, then, from a first determination of the Platonic motive; to distinguish essence

from appearance, the intelligible from the sensible, the Idea from the image, the model

from the simulacrum.”50 He calls for a re-evaluation of the simulacrum and speaks of the

simulacrum in relationship to art.

The simulacrum is constructed around a disparity, a difference; it interiorizes a dissimilitude. That is why we can no longer even define it with regard to the model...the simulacrum includes within itself the differential point of view, and the spectator is made part of the simulacrum, which is transformed and deformed according to his point

50 Gilles Deleuze. “Plato and the Simulacrum” trans. Rosalind Krauss. October, Vol. 27. (Winter,

1983), p. 43.

37

of view. In short, folded within the simulacrum there is a process of going mad, a process of limitlessness.51

That is, to Deleuze the simulacrum must not be thought of as an inadequate model, but

the very inadequacy and the difference from the model the simulacrum holds must be

thought of as its essential. The fact that it will never be true to the ideal model is not a

fact to mourn, but the very richness that the simulacrum gives the spectator.

This gives us a theoretical basis on which to think of Schlemmer’s concept of

man, especially in relationship to this course Mensch. Schlemmer in no way attempts to

construct a feasibly whole or definitive understanding of the human psyche, physiology,

or philosophy; his class points to its own inadequacy but in doing so points to the very

richness and endlessness of what it attempts to explain. That is, Schlemmer’s attempt at

providing a coherent model of human identity, his class Mensch, produces a simulacrum

of human identity. This simulacrum, thus, as Deleuze states“ is constructed around a

disparity, a difference; it interiorizes a dissimilitude.”52 The order and sense of history

that Schlemmer constructs is based upon the fact that the order will never be a

representation of reality. His model of human identity is faulty in the sense that it is not

real or even close to being whole, but necessary in the sense that the failed attempt

provides a sense of order that would not exist otherwise.

It is this term, then, that could be best used to describe the whole of Schlemmer’

51 Ibid, p. 49. 52 Ibid.

38

s work. The simulacrum points to the rupture, the gap, the irresolvable difference

between reality and the ideal model. However, what the simulacrum does is stubbornly

produce a continuing, spiraling search for, perhaps what Schlemmer would call

“number, measure, and law as armor and as a weapon” against the otherwise

multiplicitous, chaotic unfolding of events in reality. The very making of a simulacrum,

then, could be seen as an act of resistance against a complicit acceptance reality.

Schlemmer’s construction of a simulacrum of the human body and human identity was a

weapon against the frustrating and fracturing reality of experience.

39

B ib l iog raphy

Bayer, Herbert, Walter Gropius and Ise Gropius . Bauhaus. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1938. Carr, William. The History of Germany: 1815-1945. New York: St. Martins Press, 1979.

Curtis, William. Modern Architecture Since 1900. New York: Phaidon, 1996. Deleuze, Gilles. “Plato and the Simulacrum” trans. Rosalind Krauss. October, Vol. 27. (Winter, 1983), pp. 45-56. Dodds, George and Tavernor, Robert Ed. Body and building: essays on the changing relation of body and architecture. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002. Droste, Magdalena, Bauhaus, New York: Taschen, 2005. Marcel Duchamp. Salt Seller: The Writings of Marcel Duchamp. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. Fiedler, Jeannine ed. Social Utopias of the Twenties: Bauhaus, Kibbutz and the Dream of the New Man. Germany: Müller and Busmann Press , 1995. Foster, Hal, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh. Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2004. Frampton, Kenneth. Modern Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson, 2004. Goldberg, Roselee. Performace Art: from Futurism to the Present. London: Thames and Hudson, 2001. Hochman, Elaine. Bauhaus: Crucible of Modernism. New York: Fromm International, 1997. (Avery Bauhaus Section) Huxley, Michael and Witts, Noel ed. The Twentieth Century Performance Reader. New York: Routledge, 1996. Jenkins, Keith. Re-Thinking History. London: Routledge, 1991. Kisselgoff, Anna. “They Created Dance Works at the Bauhaus, too” The New York Times. October 31, 1982.

40

Kniesche, Thomas W, and Brockmann, Stephen ed. Dancing on the Volcano: essays on the culture of the Weimar Republic. Columbia SC: Camden House, 1994. Lahusen, Susanne. “Oskar Schlemmer: Mechanical Ballets?” Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research, Vol. 4, No. 2. (Autumn, 1986), p. 65-77. Lehman, Arnold and Richardson, Brenda ed. Oskar Schlemmer. Baltimore: The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1986. Lodder, Christine, Russian Constructivism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Lee, Stephen J. The Weimar Republic. London: Routledge, 1998. Man and mask: Oskar Schlemmer and the Bauhaus stage / Director: Gottfried Just. Videocassette. Bavaria Atelier GMBH Production, 1968. Moholy-Nagy,Laszlo and Schlemmer,Oskar. The Theater of the Bauhaus. Trans.Arthur Wensinger. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996. (Check out of Barnard Library) Moynihan, D.S. “Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus Dances: Debra McCall’s Reconstructions” The Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 28, No. 3, Reconstruction. (Autumn, 1984), p. 46-58. Oskar Schlemmer: Musée Cantini Catalogue. Paris: Musée de Marseille, 1999. Reynolds, Nancy and McCormick, Malcolm. Dance in the Twentieth Century: No Fixed Points. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Schlemmer, Oskar. Man: Teaching Notes from the Bauhaus. Trans. Janet Seligman. Cambridge: M.I.T Press, 1971. Schlemmer, Oskar. The Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer. Ed. Tut Schlemmer. Trans. Krishna Winston. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1972. Schwarz, Arturo. The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp. New York: Delan Greenidge Editions, 1997.

41

Sharp, Dennis. Bauhaus, Dessau. London: Phaidon, 1993. Toepfer, Karl. Empire of Ecstasy: Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 1910-1935. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Wick, Rainer ed. Teaching at the Bauhaus. Germany: Hatje Cantz. 2000.

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I l l us t ra t ions

1) Oskar Schlemmer, Space Dance 1926 (with Werner Seidhoff, Walter Kaminsky)

2) Space Dance Masks

3) Oskar Schlemmer, Figure in a Grid Space 1924

4) Oskar Schlemmer, Four Transformations 1924

5) Oskar Schlemmer, Man in the Realm of Ideas 1928

6) Oskar Schlemmer, Figure Studies 1928