A Family Album of the Modern Movement

Photography Book Collectors have it so easy. True, they have to deal with cut-throat prices and an ever-shrinking supply of quality material, but those obstacles are irrelevant to the Serious Book Collector. The reason Photobook collectors have it easy is
their collecting agendas have been codified by a holy trinity of reference books: The Book of 101 Books, The Open Book, and The Photobook: A History (volumes 1 and 2). These books have dictated the collecting tastes and set the agenda for Photobook collecting since 2001. In the Rare Book Field there are few bets more certain than offering a nice copy of a Roth 101 title for sale.

Design Book Collectors do not have the luxury of a set agenda dictating their collecting parameters. They tend to know it when they see it, but they are also remarkably open to suggestion. And that's my job.

I believe this truth to be self evident: a Good Design Library® should be built on a foundation of the classics. In this regard, there is no book more fundamentally worthy than Herbert Bayer, Walter Gropius, Ise Gropius (editors): BAUHAUS 1919-1928. [NYC: Museum of Modern Art, 1938. 4to. Mustard cloth boards stamped in black and red in photographically-printed two-color dust jacket. 224 pages and 550 b/w images. ]




BAUHAUS 1919-1928 remains the most influential Book on Modern Design ever published. The 1938 book -- a guide to an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art -- portrays the Dessau School as the well from whence all species of modernism have evolved.

This book exists as more than an object, occupying three-dimensional space as represented by the X, Y, Z axes -- it exists as a physical and spiritual manifestation of the Dessau Bauhaus. If you own an original 1938 MoMA first edition of this book, you know what I'm talking about. I know this book means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I can imagine what this book meant to Walter Gropius.

Gropius arrived in America in 1937 deeply unsatisfied that his story -- the story of the Bauhaus -- has not been comprehensively recorded.

The Weimar Exhibition Catalog from 1923 had been ambitious, but the physical limitations of book production kept the form and content beguilingly separate. Gorgeous gravure printing and nine original lithographs, representing color work from Kandinsky, Bayer, Schelemmer et al. presented the Weimar bauhaus as an Arts and Craft studio -- an exceptionally competent Arts and Craft studio, but an Arts and Craft studio nonetheless. Herbert Bayer's typographic treatment for the boards is recognized as a high-water mark for the Neue Typografie. But its nascent publication acted like a serialized novel -- promising the best is yet to come.

The Promised Best began arriving later in 1923, when Gropius and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy created the Bauhausbucher series. The series editors managed to publish 14 volumes between 1923 and 1928. Each volume addressed a specific area (Architecture, Cubism, Neoplasticism) and the editors envisioned a lengthy series that dealt with the great challenges of the day in a comprehensive and coherent fashion. The comprehensive part fell by the wayside in 1928, with Moholy-Nagy authoring The Materials of Architecture as he was leaving the Bauhaus Dessau -- his departure suddenly ended the series. His departure also -- along with Gropius and Bayer -- effectively ended the Dessau years. While the School would continue until its closure by the National Socialists in 1933, the Gropius-designed building at Dessau would always bee remembered as the Mansion on the hill for the Modern Movement. But the story remained unfinished, untold.

Shortly after Gropius arrived in Masschusetts to oversee the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Alfred Barr and the Museum of Modern art approached the retired Bauhausler. Would Gropius be interested in curating an exhibit about the recently deceased, but already legendary institution?

Walter Gropius was a man who had no need for a publicist. He agreed to edit the book along with his wife Ise and assisted by fellow emigre Herbert Bayer. For a third contributor, Bayer's contribution was considerable: the mustard-colored cloth and the distinctive black and red typographic design is the cue to the fact that you are in the presence of a very significant piece of work.




The MOMA catalog was only hindered by some rather sticky political considerations. Many objects cataloged in the Book are unattributed, in order to shield their creators from unwanted scrutiny from Berlin.

With BAUHAUS 1919-1928, Walter Gropius finally devised the platform to tell his story -- the Bauhaus story. As co-authors, Ise and Herbert Bayer were intimately involved with this book -- it feels like the trio approached the publishing task with a very specific perspective. It feels like they assembled their own family album, with all the cousins, nieces and nephews in beautifully-letterpressed black and white.

Thumbing through this 1938 book in 2008, the slim, strangely hefty volume feels like a family album of the Modern Movement.