Take a look at pho­tos of Bush Tetras — a three-girl-one-guy No Wave/­Post-Punk band from the ear­ly 1980s down­town Man­hat­tan scene. Now, look at the pho­to­graph above, “Mar­cel Breuer and His Harem,” by Bauhaus pho­tog­ra­ph­er Erich Con­semüller, tak­en some­time around 1927. Except for the fact that Breuer looks more like Ron Mael of Sparks sans mus­tache than drum­mer Dee Pop, one might mis­take this for a pho­to of the punk band. This rais­es a few ques­tions: did art stu­dents Bush Tetras look to the women of the Bauhaus for their style? Or did the women of the Bauhaus look to the future and see punk? The sec­ond sce­nario seems more like­ly since the women of the Bauhaus have not, until recent­ly, been ter­ri­bly well-known.

I per­son­al­ly feel cheat­ed after study­ing art and art his­to­ry in col­lege many years ago and only now get­ting intro­duced to sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant artists of the rad­i­cal Ger­man art school found­ed by Wal­ter Gropius. All of its famous expo­nents and art stars are men, but it seems the gen­der ratio of the Bauhaus was clos­er to that of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion (as was, in many cas­es, that of the ear­ly punk and post-punk scenes).

But we don’t tend to learn the names or see the work of these artists, and, in some cas­es, their work has been posthu­mous­ly attrib­uted to their male col­leagues. Nor are we famil­iar with their pro­gres­sive per­son­al style, essen­tial in the Bauhaus’s total approach to rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing the arts, includ­ing fash­ion, as a way to lib­er­ate human­i­ty from the dog­mas of the past.

How unfor­tu­nate that the mem­o­ry of the Bauhaus, like the mem­o­ry of punk, repli­cat­ed the same old rules its artists broke. The school’s gen­der equal­i­ty was rad­i­cal, hence the pho­tograph’s satir­i­cal title, which “express­es the pre­cise oppo­site of what the pho­to itself shows,” notes the site Bauhaus Koop­er­a­tion: “the moder­ni­ty, eman­ci­pa­tion, equal­i­ty, or even supe­ri­or­i­ty, of the women in it.” The “junior mas­ter” of the car­pen­try work­shop, Breuer looks at the three artists to his left “skep­ti­cal­ly, with his arms crossed,” as if to say, “ ‘These are ‘my’ women?!’ ” The artists of the “harem,” from left to right, are Breuer’s wife Martha Erps, Katt Both, and the pho­tog­ra­pher’s wife, Ruth Hol­lós, who “seems to be sup­press­ing laugh­ter as she looks towards the pho­tog­ra­ph­er (her hus­band).”

Erich Con­semüller, who taught archi­tec­ture at the Bauhaus, had been tasked by Gropius with doc­u­ment­ing the school and its life. Gropius part­nered him with pho­tog­ra­ph­er Lucia Moholy, wife of Lás­zló Moholy-Nagy (see a pho­to of her above, tak­en by her hus­band some­time between 1924 and 28). Moholy took most­ly exte­ri­or shots like the pho­to­graph by her fur­ther up of Erps and Hol­lós on the roof of the Ate­lier­haus in Dessau in the mid-1920s. Con­semüller main­ly focused on inte­ri­ors in his work, with exper­i­men­tal excep­tions like the “Mechan­i­cal Fan­ta­sy” series seen here, which uses cloth­ing, pos­es, and dou­ble expo­sures to visu­al­ly empha­size a kind of uni­for­mi­ty of pur­pose, plac­ing and join­ing male and female Bauhaus artists in almost typo­log­i­cal arrange­ments.

Indeed, near­ly all of the artists of the Bauhaus — as was the school’s prac­tice — tried their hand at pho­tog­ra­phy, and many used the medi­um to doc­u­ment, in ways both casu­al and delib­er­ate, the Bauhaus’s com­mit­ment to gen­der equi­ty and the full inclu­sion of women artists in its pro­grams, a state­ment painter and pho­tog­ra­ph­er T. Lux Feininger seems to under­line in the group pho­to­graph below of the school’s weavers on the steps of the new Bauhaus build­ing in 1927. (Artists in the shot: Léna Bergn­er, Gun­ta Stöl­zl, Lju­ba Mona­s­tirsky, Otti Berg­er, Lis Bey­er, Elis­a­beth Mueller, Rosa Berg­er, Ruth Hol­lós, and Lis­beth Oestre­ich­er.)

Bauhaus artists, both men and women, were very much like ear­ly punks in some ways, invent­ing new ways to shake up the estab­lish­ment and break out of pre­scribed roles. But instead of a down­town alter­na­tive to the sta­tus quo, they offered a recipe for its full trans­for­ma­tion through art. Who can say how far that move­ment would have pro­gressed had it not been splin­tered by the Nazis? “Togeth­er,” as Gropius wrote, “let us call for, devise, and cre­ate the con­struc­tion of the future, com­pris­ing every­thing in one form, archi­tec­ture, sculp­ture and paint­ing,” and most every­thing else in the built and visu­al envi­ron­ments, he might have added.

via Bar­bara Her­shey

An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2022.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Female Pio­neers of the Bauhaus Art Move­ment: Dis­cov­er Gertrud Arndt, Mar­i­anne Brandt, Anni Albers & Oth­er For­got­ten Inno­va­tors

The Pol­i­tics & Phi­los­o­phy of the Bauhaus Design Move­ment: A Short Intro­duc­tion

Watch Bauhaus World, a Free Doc­u­men­tary That Cel­e­brates the 100th Anniver­sary of Germany’s Leg­endary Art, Archi­tec­ture & Design School

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.

Art may seem inessen­tial to those who make the big deci­sions in times of cri­sis. But it nev­er seemed more nec­es­sary to artists work­ing in the time of plague. So it was 366 years ago when Rem­brandt paint­ed a por­trait of his son, Titus, in a monk’s robe in 1660. Eight years lat­er, Titus was dead from plague, which had only a few years ear­li­er killed Hen­drick­je Stof­fels, Rembrandt’s for­mer house­keep­er and sec­ond wife, who helped raise Titus, Rembrandt’s only child to sur­vive into adult­hood.

These unimag­in­able loss­es “con­tributed to the tragedy and anguish we see in Rem­brandt’s late self-por­traits,” writes The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones. Dur­ing the plague, Rem­brandt also used his work as social cri­tique.

His etch­ing The Rat-Poi­son Ped­dler shows, “in a sense,” the Min­neapo­lis Insti­tute of Art’s Tom Rassieur tells the Star Tri­bune, “the guy who pur­ports to be helping—the exterminator—is prob­a­bly doing as much to spread the dis­ease as any­one else. That relates to [crit­i­cism] of our lead­er­ship today.” In his last years, Rem­brandt paint­ed self-por­traits of his iso­la­tion and grief that found a new audi­ence dur­ing the COVID lock­down.

Else­where in the Nether­lands, Rembrandt’s con­tem­po­rary Johannes Ver­meer was no stranger to the kind of social­ly iso­lat­ed world we found our­selves in dur­ing COVID. “His home­town of Delft was strick­en with plague sev­er­al times in the artist’s life­time. In 1635 and 1636 over 2,000 peo­ple died, and in the mid-1650s and mid-1660s hun­dreds more,” notes Breeze Bar­ring­ton at CNN. The qual­i­ties we most asso­ciate with Vermeer’s work, the soli­tude and atten­tive pres­ence, were devel­oped dur­ing time spent in iso­la­tion.

“In this time of forced iso­la­tion,” Friso Lam­mertse, cura­tor of 17th-cen­tu­ry Dutch paint­ing at the Rijksmu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam, not­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Vermeer’s work “can point us at the fact that extreme beau­ty can be found just in our room.” The Rijksmu­se­um did­n’t just rec­om­mend art in the pan­demic’s state of alone­ness, but also dou­bled its col­lec­tion of free, high-res­o­lu­tion works online, by Rem­brandt, Ver­meer, and a host of oth­er artists who used art to cope with loss and lone­li­ness dur­ing the plagues of their times. The muse­um now offers 840,000 dig­i­tized images in total.

The muse­um promised to “bring the muse­um to you,” and it has deliv­ered not only with its exten­sive dig­i­tal col­lec­tion, free for down­load­ing, shar­ing and edit­ing with a free Rijksmu­se­um account, but also with infor­ma­tive series on its web­site. Art is essen­tial in the best and worst of times, when it shows us how to look close­ly at our­selves, our loved ones, and our sur­round­ings, and treat life with more care and atten­tion. Enter the Rijksmu­se­um online col­lec­tions here.

An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2021.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 361,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces by Rem­brandt Includ­ed!

Explore the New 717-Gigapix­el Scan of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, the Most Detailed Pho­to Ever Tak­en of a Work of Art

See the Com­plete Works of Ver­meer in Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty: Google Makes Them Avail­able on Your Smart­phone

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.