 Thanks to you both those were so interesting when we when we do ask questions I have to make sure that everybody Aliyah is gonna get mad at me if I don't make everybody use the Microphone because we we there the this is being streamed and you can't hear the questions So okay Such interesting papers and so many things in common with with both of them You know, I saw you nodding as she was speaking You both deal with Benya means notion of the bourgeois interior as a private haven You both deal with the absorption of the individual into the mass In modern urban society, you're both dealing with sort of interior interiority and exteriority and the dissolution of boundaries I think in one case that dissolution is Optimistic because it means communality in the other case. It's sort of horrifying because it's you know, the sort of loss of individuality and subjectivity so I Think I want to start just by asking you guys if you have questions for each other Particularly because my dissertation project is actually interested in a Bauhaus engagement with surrealism So very much French and German kind of antagonism happening there But I know that you aren't particularly interested in this But also the fact that Maholi's light modulator was on display in that exhibition How do you kind of account for that and that like avant-garde practice within those very much? Kind of everyday living spaces or what would thought to be kind of the utopian living space Yeah, so as I mentioned Gropius is asked by the Deutsche Verkbund to sort of spearhead this exhibition and The invitation came sort of from the French government. So there were there was diplomacy that was involved and Gropius was represented one of the Sort of strains of work within the Verkbund, which was this enormous organization So he reaches out and calls on his former Bauhaus colleagues to assist him in this endeavor Including Maholi Naj who taught and worked at the Bauhaus So Maholi Naj Organizes room two in the exhibition which really showcases projects that he participated in at the Bauhaus It's also very dramatically lets the whole exhibition actually employs very innovative Exhibition display techniques many of which are sort of come out of the Bauhaus sort of Era and this is the first time that his light space modulator is shown In operation and so it's a very dramatic part of the exhibition And so one thing that I didn't talk about today is the fact that In this larger sort of presentation in 1930 there were a lot of clandestine agendas that both Gropius had and also The French body the society these artists decorator had And one of those for Gropius he as I mentioned he had left the Bauhaus by this time He stepped down as the director in 1928 and the director at the time was a man named honus Meyer who Was taking the school in a different direction Gropius was not particularly pleased with that so one another sort of goal of his in the show was just to kind of showcase the highlights of Bauhaus projects as they had existed under his tenure at the at the school and so This was an opportunity to include the work of Maholi nage and and buyer And Breuer as well and in a way that has also skewed the way Historians have understood the show and really what was at stake in the show because This has often been characterized because of the inclusion of the light space modulator and the the Bauhaus projects that were on display That room also had Gropius's theater designs like I think in the slide I'm showing the this is his design for a total theater here and Right here. These are designs from Oscar Schlemmer's triadic ballet, and there were life-size Americans sorry from the ballet that rotated on axis. So this was a very dynamic Room, but this the show because of that has has also oftentimes just sort of been seen as a precursor of the big exhibition on the Bauhaus in New York in 1938 Which was organized by by bar the director of MoMA at the time it took place at moment Gropius came over he was in America and sort of helped to recreate it so so there is That's part of part of the the project here is to demonstrate Sort of the life of the Bauhaus as it existed under Gropius and I should mention honus Meyer at the time knew that Gropius, you know had this This plan and he tried and failed to host his own exhibition in Paris to showcase the glory of the Bauhaus under his tenure and he was actually Dismissed from the Bauhaus very shortly after the exhibition and then went to the Soviet Union Yeah and New York exhibition I was very interested in You know, I guess like in in your project. I'm sorry the efforts to sell things and how all of these are packaged and I was curious if you could say more about Sort of the obfuscation the the sort of Making it difficult actually see Because one of the things I was interested to when you were discussing this and I was thinking about In this exhibition room for with Herbert Bayer. There is a huge display case Which showcases objects which are for sale. They're intended to be mass produced they're all all of these objects were stamped designed in Germany and He deliberately laid them out to look as though they had Basically just come off the factory floor that this was a deliberately non-narrative presentation of objects that were meant to be for public consumption and it was meant to make them appealing for For people that came to the show. So I was curious if you could talk more about sort of That aspect of display at this time and the narrative Method of displaying when there's a story. There's a mannequin. There's a human body and then also That method and how it Obscuring it in a way sort of works Yeah, so with Ashley's photographs of the Beaumarchais Just because of the fact that he's standing so close to the facade and at a dramatic angle Unlike a lot of his other storefronts That produces this kind of disquieting effect. It's difficult to read the figures as mannequins They are about you know on the the sidewalk as if Just in terms of their placement and we don't really get Reflections of figures as well. So that kind of adds to That confusion but in terms of the display the Beaumarchais was kind of looking to the Exhibition of boutiques at the Solon d'Otonne in 1924 and the kind of use of only singular objects or a small number of objects of luxury goods To kind of advertise display that it was considered to be modern And in good taste versus the kind of piles and piles of mass-produced objects and shoes and other things that were founded a lot of other shops and street kiosks as well. And so this idea of Isolating the individual object was very much of the time in the mid-20s of trying to seem in good taste And so we get that a little bit in the display windows of the Beaumarchais that a lot of the figures are Kind of individuals even though that they're wearing very similar styled fashions And almost the kind of arrangement of goods makes it seem like an interior of sorts Especially some of the other photographs With the male mannequins as well kind of sitting on a couch or lounging in robes So in a way those displays especially with mannequins are trying to get the the shopper to think of their their life that they could have in those objects as well And it's almost it could be aspirational in a sense Hopefully that answers your question Thank you, and I think your question was sort of In the same vein as as what I wanted to ask about which is about the role of Materials in in both talks. I thought it was interesting that in both cases you had Sort of sleek reflective surfaces that kind of like elided Luxury goods whether it was kind of being placed against them like in you know in contrast to them or Like making them difficult to see in the case of the the store windows and I thought that I thought that your Comparison of the Bon Marché photographs with the the earlier ones like the one of the Boulangerie Boulangerie and was very convincing in terms of You know he is deliberately Making you see the glass in the later ones and the reflectivity and it's like and I and I agree that it is it's like the the glass becomes sort of Fused with the with the photo with the photographic plane and that glass is like made into an image and it makes everything else into an image So I think that what I'm Asking here is if you could both like maybe talk more about the role of materials and both of your discussions Yeah, there's actually a fun quote by Walker Evans and describing Ache's photographs that he really Takes fascination with the materials and the surfaces that like tactile surfaces that we get in a lot of Ache's earlier storefronts He calls it the patina of things And especially with the earlier storefronts and Photographing from across the street far away that he's he's kind of giving us this inventory of goods of things that he's paying attention to the discrete surfaces of you know the baguettes versus You know the stacks of brooms on the lower right that you almost see and the texture of the sidewalk versus the pavement versus You know the doorway and the etched signage that he's very much attuned to the kind of specificity of those materials and those Kind of tactile surfaces and then when you get to the bombache Photographs because the glass windows are just larger. It's plate glass He's so much closer and he's at this angle that it it races that almost particularity of those surface differences that it's kind of covered in this reflective sheen in a sense and it's it's more difficult to pick out the kind of Specific objects and things that it's kind of masked over and turned into almost a whole like an image Yeah, so the materials that are on display are very important in the sort of new vision of how people will live and specifically How sort of modern industrial man to use Le Corbusier's discussion in there's in our trajectory Le Corbusier talks a lot about how You know titans of industry and businessmen and people that are living in the this industrial world should not retreat You know to an interior that's filled with knickknacks and chotskies and carpets and You know cocooned that they should live at home and they shouldn't he says they shouldn't be caged like tigers You know in these sort of bourgeois interiors that they should live at home with the same kind of industrial materials that are in in the exterior world and so part of the use of Chrome steel in particular with the Breuer furniture is a response to that it also is an effort to to create objects that can be there is an interest here in mass production and standardization and there's a lot of discussion Breuer and other French designers who are using steel in their designs like Charlotte Perri all About the merits of using these kinds of materials Not just for the aesthetic which is more aligned with you know modern living, but also the fact that Steel for example is more hygienic than wood It is not Sensitive to moisture the way wood is You can use less of it. It's stronger So you can create designs that are lighter sort of more open you can also Assemble it and disassemble it, you know easily package it As you're talking about steel and the the advantages of it. I'm thinking back to Kerry's quote from Benjamin about you know these different Fabrics Like you know absorbing the touch of you know bearing the print imprint of the of the body Was there do you think that in the design of you know these Bauhaus designers? Was there a conscious attempt to kind of get rid of the trace of the human body in using those materials? I mean in a way, but they also some of the designs in in this room are actually the The chairs are upholstered Or they're wicked so that it's not a so they're not using materials that could retain You know sort of traces and there also is a very concerted effort to sort of humanize this kind of furniture you see There are some famous photographs of or there's a famous photograph of perhaps Gropius's wife Louncing on one of these chairs with a mask on that was from Oscar Schlemmer's theatrical productions So there's a there's always a way to kind of associate it with the human body and oftentimes the the female body And you see that also with some of the French designers so Charlotte Perignon who works with Le Corbusier Is photographed in chairs that she's designed and so there's a way in which kind of there's an association between the paired down forms of these new chairs the lightness and sort of the new aesthetic of the new woman and a new man in this kind of world, but Yeah, but they are using materials and And fabrics and textures that that you know are in some ways responsive to this kind of plush velour cushioned Sort of aesthetic that any mean talks about yeah Yeah, and so I always think about too of talking about glass and steel is you know not receiving contact But fingerprints like those surfaces get so messy Especially mirrors and the shop window It's of course like you can't walk by a pane of glass glass now without seeing some kind of child fingerprint Or something on it. So it's Also in a sense they promote hygiene, but you have to keep up with it more regularly to kind of maintain that very clean Feeling and so for Benjamin too a lot of the times the interior then becomes kind of the Precursor almost to the detective story that he's tying in notions of surveillance with these kind of materials in the bodily traces that those traces Then be used are used against the individual Later, which is I think kind of a fun Why don't we open it up to questions So I have a question for Carrie It's a really great plenty of both of yours so I have two questions first one is So one of your quote one of the quote that you showed on the slides already went one by really fast So I didn't really catch the whole thing. It says are just I just pictures Empty but not just lonely and Would you say that's also where Bernice Abbott got her inspiration from that? very specific spirit in her change in New York series and The second question is Would you say that this Also continues like what you guys just said talking about this and also like to combine go back to Empty but not lonely Would you say that he was trying to show in all those motives and certain arrangements? What does he think that's more? than real human beings I'm not under sure that I understand the second part of your question, but we'll come back to that but with the first one Bernice Abbott famously along with Julian Levy actually bought up at Chase negatives upon his death in 1927 and Bernice Abbott actually printed made several prints from the original negatives Dalton silvers That are kind of split between MoMA the George Eastman Museum and a bunch of others So it is possible that you know, Benjamin could be serving as some kind of reference point, but at the same time the version that I Showed you from little history of photography is from 1931 I'm not sure of its first translation into English and I don't believe Bernice Abbott was fluent in German at this time And her changing New York series correctly if I'm wrong I think is from 38 36 38 is about the start So I'm not sure about that direct comparison, but Bernice Abbott very much is close With actually she was serving as man raised studio assistant for a number of years as well And then you know continued her relationship with actually after leaving man raised studio and starting kind of her own practice So actually is definitely kind of a touchstone for her, but about that particular quote. I'm not sure And the second part half of your question I was trying to say that since Ajay is Very familiar or he's very good at using those motives or certain arrangements like the way Like the way that you put the mannequins or and in many of his pictures He's also very interested in the facade of the buildings and also like the curves of the stairways So by using those motive also one of your pictures shows that the interiors of of a very typical apartment apartment room and I was just thinking that Those quiet images doesn't have humans was he thinking that Those are the part that made up the society that he sees Rather than the real human beings Yeah, so I guess the benium manian reading of that would be that we are getting the human through Those kinds of traces that even though we're not seeing the figures of the people we see what they leave behind We see what they're coming in contact with From boots to kind of refuse and detritus that's left behind at an outdoor cafe To hand carts and so even though we're not seeing the actual humans We're seeing kind of the the remnants of what they left behind And so we're getting the human that way but obviously to Ben you mean is concerned with 19th century friends in Paris and actually his photographs are early 20th So there's a connection obviously there, but Yeah Thank you very much Thanks question for Alisa I Found your paper very beautiful and very convincing and I was especially interested in your claim about the destabilization of the gender binary and you know as these spaces are very modern and and they are getting away from the kind of 19th century, you know plushness and knick-knacks and everything I Agree, but I just wonder if you could just elaborate a little more on the extent to which some gender binaries are retained as you alluded to with the globe and and and everything or Whether there's you know, even more destabilization or even more breaking down of that boundary that you could comment on Yeah, so and this Particular sort of arrangement for this married couple Was something as I mentioned that particularly it really incensed the French critics, you know who saw the show and One of the one of the broader efforts one of the broader sort of objectives here was Of Gropius and Breuer was really in keeping with what so many of their colleagues across Europe were doing which was to rationalize the home and they wanted to liberate women they wanted to Make it so that they were relieved from the burden of housework and chores so you see a lot of writings at this period and and also similar schemes that Really want to create a rational space Bruno Taut actually writes around this time an instruction manual to German housewives and It's basically all about how to a create a space that Is sort of free of the the chachkies and the things that will add to the labor that they have to you know produce in the home But he's also thinking like Gropius and others about how to just make their lives easier And I think it's interesting too that there are there are some female designers that are working but it really again as men who are trying to sort of Redesign this world that particularly has yet a traditionally been the sphere where women have had more influence and and more power and so yeah a lot of a lot of accounts Subsequently after this exhibition characterized these rooms as being basically indistinguishable Suzanne T. Set the Musée des Arts decoratives says they're you know identical and as I mentioned you can see that there are Some ways in which they are gendered In the the room for the wife. There is the serving tray, which is adjacent to the kitchen So there's still a way in which you know the female role is as The scene is being linked to Kitchen work and I'm cooking And there also are there's the bowl of flowers, you know and when you look more carefully You can see there's more glass in her room there. There's a kind of lighter Color tone in this photo. You can't see it But the bed which is also made of this tubular steel furniture for her Is sort of a wider double bed in the room for the man? It's more of a day bed, you know, it looks a little bit more like an office But the bed is one that could be used for sleeping in as well She has Magazines in the men's room. There are books. There's more open cabinet space for the in the men in the man's room so there are a lot of ways in which Despite and I should say yeah, the globe is kind of you know a symbol of you know, you know Travel moving beyond the sphere of the home in the man's room There's a grant there's also a gramophone in the room for the woman. So that's been feminized here so despite the efforts to you know, respond to this world where You know, especially post-world one world one Germany. There are so many German women, you know, who have Who have jobs, you know have incomes are economically emancipated There are you know, there's a great effort to sort of figure out how to house them in this This new post-world one world So there are efforts to Alleviate their traditional domestic duties, but at the same time the design in some ways reinforces the traditional stereotypes, you know That women are you know, their their duties are to take care of the households and certain leisurely activity activities are gendered So yeah, there you see both here in this design and that's true of other designs at the time as well Yeah, hi, thank you both very much for your presentations. I have a question pertaining to The German and French kind of relationship And I was hoping you would talk a little more about Gropius's intentions with displaying internationally From what I understand about the Bauhaus and when he was Serving presidency there. He wanted to create mass produced objects that the common people would use but both of your Presentations have mentioned these objects to be luxury goods. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about If Gropius had that intention to display for a luxurious bourgeois Audience or if he was going behind his word or if he had other intentions that caused him to want to besides The rivalry at the Bauhaus at the time Yeah, well this was a very prestigious opportunity and a very high-profile event Paris was still an important city to display, you know, your your artistic ideas And as I mentioned the the stakes were very high There was a lot of political significance to the exhibition because it had been the first time that Germany had presented in 20 years they had been excluded from the very important international show in 1925 so so Gropius knew that you know, this was an opportunity to showcase his ideas to a very large audience and That a lot of people would be paying attention and as I said he used that opportunity to to you know Promote his legacy at the Bauhaus and also to promote this new vision and yes, it's true But at the Bauhaus under his tenure in 1919 there are more sort of The the the ten years more in in lined with express expressive sort of tropes And then as he changed this by 1925 when he designs the school in Dessau He is really very interested in designing and encouraging Objects and ways of living that can be mass-produced and standardized and that's something that he and other other artists who are working at the Bauhaus are working towards and Yeah, as you see so so one of the intense here is this is something And you see the theme again and again in the different rooms with for example, yeah here showing objects laid out and in in a non-narrative way to Invoke factory production and mass production cereal production In the the last room with the photographic panels in the corner there are other tonnette chairs and tubular steel chairs designed by Breuer which are Suspended in a way to also suggest Serial production mass production the bridge the prototype for the bridge Which was very heavily Promoted by the section Alamon catalog is also a prototype for mass production So this was something that Gropius was really interested in both for Houses like the actual components that would be Used to construct a house. They could be prefabricated mass produced but also for the designed objects that people would live with and The reality and this was true for a lot of the objects that came out of the Bauhaus while Gropius was there was that You know, they actually ended up being very expensive to create and so These were you know created in small batches, but they weren't ever Affordable for the mass public and that was really his goal He wanted this to be something that you know the average person could live with and that was actually One of the critiques so on the French press as I mentioned sort of was very hostile And in almost acting in an official capacity, you know on behalf of the French nation or something that this was you know German unified Vision of German and collectivist society and tendencies and you know It was it was very much at odds with you know the French way of life and that There's also sort of a problem with that Characterization which is to which suggests that what you see here was representative Of what was happening across the design scene in Germany more broadly and even the Virgbund. So Gropius was coming from the Bauhaus, but he was also a member of the Virgbund, which I as I said was this enormous group of both artists and Titans of industry it had been founded in 1907 to bridge the gap between art and design and he was just he represented one one pole of the kinds of work that people were doing so Actually, there were members of the Virgbund who were very angry about what Gropius had presented here Who were less inclined to want to to demonstrate a way of life that corresponded to perhaps standardized objects that could be mass produced and Some of the they actually they held a the Virgbund held an emergency meeting in Stuttgart a few months later Where the majority of the members took a vote and denounced, you know, what Gropius had presented But one of the critiques was actually that You know that you know Gropius if you say you want this to be embraced by most average people One German reviewer actually broke down the cost for each of these objects How much they would cost and he said, you know a bus driver can't live like this, you know Somebody working in a restaurant can't live like this. So, you know, you have failed fundamentally with you know What you're trying to do But yeah, there was always that That tension between, you know, this this vision of what life could be like and the reality the cost and even Gropius was also attacked at CM, you know with his pronouncement that living in a high-rise would be beneficial, you know in terms of responding to how Nuclear family was changing and how people were needed to live in the future But you know, one of his arguments was that it was more cost effective And he was also criticized by German, you know, some of his German colleagues who said Actually, it's not it counts the same, you know, so why are we doing this? We can have, you know mid-rise Dwellings or even individual dwellings like what Ernst May produced in Frankfurt that are you know in an estate, but you know are meant for maybe one family So yeah that tension between the realities of cost and the vision were always sort of present there Thank you. Thank you and thank you both for your excellent papers. We will meet back here For session three starting at three o'clock