THE BAUHAUS IN HISTORY
by Ben Davis
What does the Bauhaus mean to us, today?This, more than anything else, is the question provoked by the recent "Bauhaus" show at the Museum of Modern Art, as well as the various other exhibitions and symposia that marked the 90th anniversary of the legendary art school last year. In Artforum
, K. Michael Hays answered the question by saying that the Bauhaus represented a belief in the unifying power of geometry, something we no longer can share. In the January Art in America
, Joan Ockman replies that the school may indeed still be relevant -- but only the Expressionist early period, so different than what we normally associate with the term "Bauhaus."