Bauhaus Gestaltung as a New Philosophy of Life

The thesis of this text is that the modernist paradigms of art —work of art, creation, and aesthetic experience—were reinterpreted by the Bauhaus idea of the Gestaltung of life. This unique conceptual foundation implied the theoretical and practical education meant to form ( gestalten) not only art and culture, but also life as a whole, as a dynamic organism consisting of two elements—the individual and the space of the individual existence. Bauhaus architecture and design of objects for everyday use were practiced as the Gestaltung of living space in a postwar world of industrial production. The practices of fine arts were developed to improve the human sensory potential and perceptive relations to space. Gestalt psychologists and the Bauhaus worked out the implications of two different meanings of Goethe’s original idea of the Gestalt. The Preliminary Course (Vorkurs) as well as the reflected-light compositions (Reflektorische Farbenlichtspiele), and the artistic solutions of László Moholy-Nagy and Oskar Schlemmer are considered as the concrete educational and artistic achievements of the Bauhaus Gestaltung.