gestalt theory and bauhaus – a correspondence between roy behrens, brenda danilowitz, william s....

GESTALT THEORY© 2012 (ISSN 0170-057 X)

Vol. 34, No.1, 81-98

Gestalt theory and Bauhaus – A CorrespondenceBetween Roy Behrens, Brenda Danilowitz, William S. Huff, Lothar Spillmann, Gerhard Stemberger and Michael Wertheimer in the summer of 2011

Introduction and Summary

By Geert-Jan Boudewijnse

What follows is a summary of an email exchange among Roy Behrens, Brenda Danilowitz, William S. Huff, Lothar Spillmann, Gerhard Stemberger and Michael Wertheimer which took place over the summer of 2011. In this introduction I will not specify the input of each scholar, but just report the main findings. For the details of this exchange please read the correspondence in full text following this introduction.

The discussion was triggered by a remark by Barbara Veigl - Trouvain in Gestalt Theory 33, p. 217 wherein she reported about a visit of participants of a GTA conference to the Berlin Bauhaus center. She wrote that “although till now no direct relation between the work of the Bauhaus and Gestalt theory has been demonstrated, many points of contact are obvious – e.g. questions about the connection between matter (form) and function (content).”

The discussion was about the question: was the strong resemblance between the Gestalt theorists on the one hand and Bauhaus artists, craftsmen and designers on the other just accidental or were the artists, craftsmen, designers and architects at the Bauhaus influenced by the Gestalt theorists and Gestalt theory? Resemblance as such does not imply a direct influence. The resemblance may well have been the result of earlier influences common to both groups. In the case of these two manifestations of German thought Goethe comes to mind as a possibility. Furthermore, the resemblance may have been the result of completely different influences that were independently of each other worked out to similar notions. For instance, some artists and craftsmen at the Bauhaus studied the Tao Te Chin by Lao-Tzu and were struck by Lao-Tzu’s insight that the spacing and intervals between concrete material things are important factors in the functionality of an object. An object is not determined solely by matter; it is the relationship between material components that determine the function of an object (see Tao Te Chin, ch. 11). The Gestalt theorists also taught the importance

Discussion - Diskussion

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of spacing and intervals among material components, but their starting point was a careful analysis of the perception of physical stimuli.

Marianne Teuber (???) reported that the widow of Wolfgang Köhler had told her that Karl Duncker held a lecture at Bauhaus. Duncker would have replaced Mrs. Köhler’s husband who was at that moment in the United Sates. However, there are no other sources that confirm her memory. Thus, we do not find any mention whatsoever of this talk in the archives of Bauhaus or Duncker or in any of the memories of the persons connected to the Bauhaus. That makes it possible that Köhler’s widow was mistaken in her memory and that the lecture did not take place.

However, there is enough evidence to assume that the resemblance between the two schools is partly due to interactions among members of the two groups, and also to the study of the Gestalt literature by the staff and students of the Bauhaus. In the season 1930-1931 Karlfried Graf von Dürkheim came from Leipzig to hold a series of lectures on Gestalt psychology at the Bauhaus. They were organized at the request of the student council. This implies that the students at the Bauhaus had some knowledge and interest in Gestalt theory. Dürkheim’s lectures have influenced (at least) one student, Kurt Kranz and one teacher, Josef Albers. Albers attended most of Dürkheim’s lectures and would infuse basic design with Gestalt notions. Later when he was teaching in the United States his students remarked that he knew the names of all Gestalt theorists and often discussed the works of Max Wertheimer. Albers differentiated between factual and actual; between a physical fact and a psychic effect. Indeed, he saw this discrepancy as the origin of art. That discrepancy has been one of the major starting points – if not the major starting point – for Gestalt theoretical investigations.

Rudolf Arnheim went to the Dessau Bauhaus to work on his essay Das Bauhaus in Dessau. However, he visited Bauhaus in the summer when “nobody, either famous or infamous, was around that I [Arnheim] recall” (Behrens, Email 26 July 2011). Arnheim, one may suspect, did not have a noticeable influence on the staff or students of the Bauhaus; they just were not there. Still, later Albers invited Arnheim to give a talk to his students at Yale.

There were not only these personal contacts. The Bauhaus artists also studied Gestalt theoretical literature. Walter Gropius and others made statements from which it is clear that they knew the Gestalt principles and the Gestalt literature of their time. For instance, Vassily Kandinsky frequently mentioned the Gestalt theorists but he also told his students that the Gestalt theorists merely confirmed his earlier findings. During the 1930s Paul Klee used some of the figures of Wertheimer’s 1923 publication in several of his own paintings. Thomas Maldonado, another teacher at Bauhaus lectured on Gestalt and gave his students Gestalt exercises and encouraged them to study Gestalt literature which was available at the school’s library. Hannes Meyer was also interested in Gestalt principles and their application in art and craft.

Discussion – Gestalt theory and Bauhaus - A Correspondence

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Clearly, there is much more to this subject. Obviously, this exchange touched only the surface of the relationship between Bauhaus and Gestalt theory, and the reception of each other’s work. We hope that this summary will inspire scholars to study it in much more depth.

ReferencesTeuber, Marianne (1976): Blue Night by Paul Klee. In: Henle, M., ed., Vision and Artifact, New York: Springer, 131-151.

Geert-Jan Boudewijnse, semi-retired, earned his doctorate degree on a historical thesis on the relationship between Franz Brentano and the later Gestalt schools. He taught psychological courses including the course History of Psychology at the two English speaking universities in Montreal, Concordia and McGill. Some of his most important papers were published in Gestalt Theory.Address: 3, rue Beacon, H9J 2E9 Kirkland, Canada.E-Mail: [email protected]

Bauhaus Apartment house in Tel Aviv - © Wolfgang Krammer 2011


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The Correspondence

Lothar Spillmann, 16 July 2011:(English translation of this email originally written in German1 that circulated among the group members)

Dear Mr. Stemberger, On page 217 (at the top) of the latest issue of Gestalt Theory, for the sending of which I thank you, Barbara Veigl-Trouvain writes, “Even if to date no direct relation between the work at the Bauhaus and Gestalt theory has been demonstrated, many points of contact--e.g. questions of the connection between material (form) and function (content)--are unmistakable.”

I believe that Mrs. Marianne Teuber has indicated that Gestalt psychologists taught at the Bauhaus. Klee in particular was inspired Gestalt-psychologically. Michael Wertheimer will certainly be able to say more about this; after all, he knew Arnheim.

William Huff, Claudio Guerri, and Roy Behrens will also be able to contribute to this discussion.

With good wishes, Lothar Spillmann.

William S. Huff, 16 July 2011:

Lothar, does this help?Here is a passage from my article for the 50th Jubilee of the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) at Ulm, with a footnote. (Huff, William S., “Grundlehre at the HfG—with a Focus on the “Visual Grammatik,’” Ulmer Modelle—Modelle nach Ulm / Hochschule für Gestaltung 1953-1968 (Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2003), 172-197.)

“Probably tentatively, at first, Albers came to infuse basic design with Gestalt. Beginnings of this can very likely be accredited to Karlfried Graf von Dürkheim’s lectures on Gestalt psychology at the Bauhaus, which had been arranged by Hannes Meyer.”[1]

________________________________________[1] Individual psychology vis à vis social psychology. Wingler, Bauhaus, 10, 159.

1 Lieber Herr Stemberger, auf S. 217 (oben) des letzten Heftes der Gestalt Theory, für dessen Zusendung ich Ihnen danke, schreibt Barbara Veigl-Trouvain: „Auch wenn bisher keine direkte Beziehung zwischen der Arbeit am Bauhaus und der Gestalttheorie nachgewiesen wurde, sind viele Berührungspunkte - z.B. Fragen nach dem Zusammenhang von Material (Form) und Funktion (Inhalt) - unübersehbar.“ Ich denke, Frau Marianne Teuber hat darauf hingewiesen, dass am Bauhaus Gestaltpsychologen gelehrt haben. Klee insbesondere ist gestaltpsychologisch inspiriert worden. Michael Wertheimer wird sicher mehr dazu sagen können, er kannte ja Arnheim. Auch William Huff, Claudio Guerri und Roy Behrens dürften zu dieser Diskussion etwas beitragen können.Mit guten Wünschen, Lothar Spillmann.


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Such lectures were seemingly a contradictory break with one of the fundamental cannons/precepts of the Bauhaus: Do not look at books. Many references on the Bauhaus’s ban of the book, etc., can be found; and I read one recently in the past few days, but I cannot now find it.

However, I reference a passage from a paper (“The Book and the Board”) that I presented in Istanbul in 2007:

“[Beginning with the material itself] offers us the opportunity to manipulate our media directly, not restricted by introductory explanations, theories or aims—including preparatory ‘class reading.’” [i]

________________________________________ [i] Josef Albers, Search Versus Re-Search (Hartford, Conn.: Trinity College Press 1969), 33

Here is the contradiction: Albers was no doubt learning from Gestalt lectures (Dürkheim and books), while he told students not to look at books or listen to lectures. He specifically cites Gestalt in his writings. Gropius and most other Bauhaus persons made similar statements about not referring to books. On the other hand, at Ulm, Maldonado specifically lectured on Gestalt, assigned explicit Gestalt exercises, and gave us bibliographic references on Gestalt--most found in the HfG library.

I also credit Albers with Gestalt teaching (which I picked up from him for my own studio classes)--that is, involving the whole class in the critique of each individual student’s work, as well as facilitating the ability to compare one student’s solution with the solutions of all the others at the same time. That is: All students put up their work on the tack board at one time--or, if 3-D, on the table or on the floor at the same time.

WilliamPS Though I have not read everything that Klee has written, I do not know of any reference by him to Gestalt. It is interesting that Hannes Meyer (after he became Director and after Gropius left) brought in Gestalt. Since Klee was at the Bauhaus till the end, he could have taken interest in Dürkheim, if not in Gestalt on his own before that. If you know of any specific references by Klee, please, let me know.

As a side comment, several Bauhaus figures, especially Johannes Itten, were involved in the Esoteric movement (therefore, taking a different approach to form and material). Curiously, Claudio’s mother has also been heavily involved in that movement.

You can, of course forward this, if it is appropriate.William


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Michael Wertheimer, 16 July 2011:

Thank you, Lothar, for sending me a copy of this message. Yes, there was indeed fairly extensive interaction between folks at the Bauhaus and the Gestalt theorists, and Marianne Teuber did indeed write about the Bauhaus. Dr. Stemberger might wish to consult the biography of Max Wertheimer (Max Wertheimer and Gestalt Theory; Transaction 2005: pages 157-158, 167, 182 and 370) for some documentation.

Michael Wertheimer

Gerhard Stemberger, 26 July 2011:

Dear all,Thanks to all of you for your interest and comments on the Bauhaus/Gestalt theory issue. My comment comes with delay because I’ve been travelling.

The starting point of this discussion has been a remark in “Gestalt Theory” report about a visit of GTA conference participants to the Berlin Bauhaus center. In this report Barbara Veigl-Trovain wrote as a side remark that to date there has been no proof of a direct relation between the work of Bauhaus and Gestalt theory though many points of contact are obvious.

The wording in this brief remark, of course, does not justice to the issue, as you all have pointed out.

Lothar Spillmann wrote that Marianne Teuber mentioned that Gestalt psychologists taught at the Bauhaus. Going back to the Teuber article where this claim is made, one sees that Teuber’s source for this claim is the widow of Wolfgang Köhler, who told Teuber that Karl Duncker held a lecture at the Bauhaus center in Dessau in to replace Wolfgang Köhler who had been invited to give a lecture there but could not go since he was then in the USA.The problem now is that this second hand account seems to be the only source stating that there has been a Bauhaus lecture by Karl Duncker. Wherever this Bauhaus lecture of Duncker is mentioned, the source is always directly or indirectly the Teuber article. One of our authors, Helmut Boege, has undertaken an intensive search for other sources that could substantiate this claim by visiting and searching the Bauhaus archives, contacting Bauhaus historians, searching in the Duncker archives and else, but all in vain, though it is verified that Duncker’s father Hermann Duncker – a friend of Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer - has given two lectures in 1929 at the Bauhaus (introductions in Marxist thought). However, we were not able to find any direct proof for a lecture by Karl Duncker in Dessau, besides the indirect account in the Teuber article.

This, of course, is no proof to the contrary; it might well be that this lecture has


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indeed been held like Köhlers widow told Marianne Teuber, but finding not a single trace of this lecture in the Bauhaus lecture programs, reports, archives and finding not a single trace of it in the Karl Duncker archives or in any account of Klee or other Bauhaus artists makes one wonder.

Best wishes and regards,Gerhard Stemberger

Roy Behrens, 26 July 2011

Hello allHere are my contributions to the discussion of possible links between Gestalt psychology and the Bauhaus. My own opinion is that there was very little direct connection, although much resemblance between the two attitudes. I’m sure there are many more sources, but these are the ones I am able to find this morning.(1) Statement by Bauhaus student Hannes Beckmann from “Formative Years” in Eckhard Neuman, ed., Bauhaus and Bauhaus People. Revised edition. (NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993), p. 209:

“Painting and other artistic activities were in danger of becoming isolated, and the Bauhaus seemed to develop into a school of architecture and industrial design only. It was at this time [c1930] that the student council requested that lectures about Gestalt psychology should be given. The request was granted, and von Durkheim came from Leipzig to give a series of lectures on this subject. Up until this time design problems were more or less solved on the feeling level. It looked as if the artist asked the scientists for reassurance that they were on the right track. The Gestalt psychologists had after all for years investigated how we perceive and interpret form and color in the mind. They explained the reason why some configurations make for good reading—for a good Gestalt, where the whole makes more than the sum of its parts—whereas other configurations will make for bad reading, for a bad Gestalt, where parts remain apart. It may be that the interest of the Bauhaus, a school in Gestalt psychology itself, Hochschule für Gestaltung, points to the direction that future art schools will take. Realizing that art, as such, cannot be taught, the emphasis may be on visual education, partly based on Gestalt psychological insight, with an aim to achieve what Josef Albers calls: ‘A meaningful approach to the production of form.’”

(2) Statement by Bauhaus student Kurt Kranz from “Bauhaus Pedagogy and Thereafter” in Eckhard Neuman, ed., Bauhaus and Bauhaus People. Revised edition. (NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993), p. 276:

“The unified-whole theory, especially in psychology—with the findings of Ehrenfeld [sic], Katz, and Koffka, as impressed upon me by Count [Karlfried] von Durckheim—continued to preoccupy me. Even the strongest argument in discussions held at Harvard’s Carpenter Center [where Rudolf Arnheim was on the faculty] failed to explain away the truth of ‘The whole is bigger than the sum of its parts.’ Much in today’s microbiology confirms the Gestalt principle of a unified


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whole. As a visiting dean at Harvard, I was able to rethink the question of basic forms. In the foreground, in the place of Platonic forms, we now had the patterns in nature, with their spirals, symmetrics, branchings, etc. In this connection, the morphology of D’Arcy W. Thompson and Peter S. Stevens ought to be mentioned. Since then, I see all artistic work as being parallel to the basic form in nature.”

(3) Statement by T. Lux Feininger (son of Bauhaus teacher Lionel Feininger) from “Bauhaus: Evolution of an Idea” in Eckhard Neuman, ed., Bauhaus and Bauhaus People. Revised edition. (NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993), p. 184:

[He is talking about Walter Gropius’ 1919 proclamation on the founding of the Bauhaus] “Never was the truth of the prophet being derided at home more applicable than in his case. His prophecy begins, as is proper, with a word. The name of his creation was to be: ‘The Bauhaus, Hochschule für Gestaltung.’ The word ‘Gestaltung’ embodies the philosophy he envisioned.

If the term ‘Bauhaus’ was new adaptation of the medieval concept of the ‘Bauhutte,’ the headquarters of the cathedral builders, the term ‘Gestaltung’ is old, meaningful and so nearly untranslatable that it has found its way into English usage. Beyond the significance of shaping, forming, thinking through, it has the flavor underlining the totality of such fashioning, whether of an artifact or an idea. It forbids the nebulous and the diffuse. In its fullest philosophical meaning it expresses the Platonic eidolon, the Urbild, the pre-existing form.”

(4) Statement by former Dessau Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer from “My Expulsion from the Bauhaus: An Open Letter to Lord Mayor Hesse of Dessau,” published in Das Tagebuch (Berlin). Vol 11 No 33 (August 16, 1930), pp. 1307ff. Reprinted in English in Hans Wingler, ed., The Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1969, p. 163:

“I tried to counteract the dangers of pseudo-scientific activity by strengthening the guest lecture series and with the ridiculously low annual salary of RM 5,000 I engaged for the Bauhaus the services of personalities like O. Neurath, Vienna, K. van Meyenburg, Basel, Dr. Dunker [sic], Berlin [is this Karl Duncker or his father? It seems that his father, Hermann, did lecture at the Dessau Bauhaus], Dr. H. Riedel, Dresden, Dr. R. Carnap, Freiburg, Dr. W. Dubislav, Berlin, Dr. E. Feigl, Vienna, Dr. L. Schminke, Neukolin, Count Durkheim, Leipzig, Karel Teige, Prague, Dr. H. Prinzhorn, Frankfort, etc.” [

Not pertaining to this, but it’s interesting to find the names of Carnap and Prinzhorn, who are prominent for other reasons.]

(5) There was a connection between Walter Gropius and Wolfgang Kohler, superficial perhaps, but a connection nevertheless, as stated in Brett King and Michael Wertheimer, Max Wertheimer and Gestalt Theory. NJ: Transaction Pub lishers, 2005, p. 181:

“Following his success [his design of the Fagus factory] and the First World War, he [Gropius] began undertaking specific actions to establish the Bauhaus school.


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Among the colleagues who he consulted about his plans was Wilhelm Kohler, director of a Weimar museum and brother of Wolfgang Kohler. Walter Scheidig, Weimar Crafts of the Bauhaus 1919-1924. NY: Reinhold, 1967.”

(6) Wassily Kandinsky talked about Gestalt theory in his Bauhaus lectures, as stated in Paul Overy, Kandinsky: The Language of the Eye (New York: Praeger, 1970), p. 49. Regarding this, the following statement appears in Rainer K. Wick, Teaching at the Bauhaus. Hatje Cantz 2000, p. 222:

“According to an oral communication from Kurt Kranz on 19 January 1981 (Kranz was a student at the Bauhaus from 1930 to 1933), Kandinsky frequently mentioned in his course the names of the main representatives of the school of Gestalt psychology. He always made it clear, however, that the results of Gestalt psychology were merely a confirmation of his own earlier findings.”

Bauhaus in Israel: Front of a hotel on Dizengoff Square, in which one of the first cinemas of Tel Aviv was located © Wolfgang Krammer 2012


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In contrast to this, Wick also states: “Despite the similarities [between Gestalt theory and Bauhaus teaching philosophy], however, no points of contact have been determined that speak to a more direct dependence of Kandinsky on Gestalt psychology or of a dependence on the parts of Kohler or other Gestalt psychologists on Kandinsky’s theory of design” (p. 211).

(7) In 1927, while working as a writer for Die Weltbuhne, Rudolf Arnheim went to the Dessau Bauhaus one weekend, and wrote an essay on the building’s architectural form, which was subsequently published as “Das Bauhaus in Dessau.” He and I corresponded several times each month for more than ten years, and when I asked him about connections between the Gestaltists and the Bauhaus, he didn’t believe there were any. When he visited the Dessau Bauhaus, he told me in a letter, “it was summer and nobody, either famous or infamous, was around that I recall.” In 1997, Rudi gave me a new English translation of his original German essay, and it was freshly published in the New York graphic design magazine PRINT in the same year, with my introduction.

I hope this is of interest.Best, Roy Behrens

Bauhaus in Israel: Balcony in an apartment house in Tel Aviv - © Wolfgang Krammer 2010


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Michael Wertheimer on 26 July 2011

One more thought on this matter: Apparently Paul Klee explicitly used some of the figures in Wertheimer’s 1923 paper on the organization of perception in his own paintings, as described by Marianne Teuber. This appears to have occurred in several Klee paintings during the 1930s, perhaps most clearly in his 1937 painting “Blue Night.” See, e.g., pages 158, 181, and 397 in King and W “Max Wertheimer and Gestalt Theory,” New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2005/2009.

Regards to all. Michael Wertheimer

William Huff on 26 July 2011

To all, The email of Roy Behrens of 26. July and emails from others have contributed a lot of good information.

It is interesting to see Eck Neuman quoted here. He was a classmate of mine at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) in Ulm in 1956-57. He did a wonderful job in interviewing almost all of the surviving Bauhäusler, after his one year at the HfG.

I am reminded that the Bauhaus was not a single-minded entity (as many take it to be). It was dynamic: from Itten at the beginning (who brought his version of Expressionism) to Moholy at mid-course (who came with his version of Russian Constructivism) to Albers at the end (who was there from near the beginning as a senior student and by its end had become one of its greatest teachers and greatest influences). Albers was a proud man who had his quirks. He was very quick to tell you about who was phony (in his mind), but seldom who was relevant. (He has written a few nice words about Cezanne, for instance; and I am certain that he respected Klee, though he was going in a different direction from Klee) In fact, I believe that Albers felt that he had to distinguish himself in respect to all of the other Bauhaus Masters. For instance, his big contribution at the Bauhaus was paper-folding. Kandinsky (psychological expression of color) and Klee (theory of color) already covered color, so I believe that Albers did not dare to go into color there in competition to his former Masters. But after he left the Bauhaus and went to Black Mountain, N.C., he burst out with his teaching of the “interaction of color” (i.e., perception of color). I have already mentioned that you will find Albers briefly but specifically citing Gestalt in some of his later writings.

Two anecdotes:(1) From 2 to 6 December 1957 (after my year at the HfG), Albers was a guest visitor for a week (five days) for the first year class in Architecture at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (CIT) in Pittsburgh and gave three or four public lectures


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(which are all in his Search versus Re-Search, Trinity Press). I was permitted by Paul Schweikher, Head of Architecture at CIT, (as well as Albers, himself) to audit Albers’s class (for unfortunately, I had not taken advantage of taking a class from Albers when he came to Yale as Head of the Art Department around 1950). It so happened that Gropius had come to Pittsburgh during this same week to give a public lecture (on Japanese architecture) at the Carnegie Museum (not CIT). There was little contact, if any meeting at all, of the two during these days; Schweikher arranged the social events around Albers (which usually included me), but did not include Gropius. However, one day, I believe on Wed., 4 Dec., Gropius came to CIT for an informal talk with students (before his formal evening lecture); this talk was held in the very large drafting room where all the students had their work stations, excepting for the first year students. Albers was in a smaller room, yet a large room in itself, with the first year students, where I was auditing him. Albers probably somehow sensed that Gropius was around. Suddenly in the middle of his criticism of a first year student’s design, he paused, then, said: “Excuse me, I must say this: Gropius never understood the Bauhaus.” Some time later during that afternoon, I went into the large studio room where Gropius was talking to the rest of the architecture students. At one point, Gropius paused and said, “I understand that--though I have not yet seen him--my good friend Josef Albers is here. I have to say this: Josef Albers was the best teacher at the Bauhaus.”

(2) I witnessed Albers teaching at Carnegie, as mentioned, and a number of times at Yale, when I occasionally visited there after I had finished my studies. During his class, he would often critique a student’s work in regard to his/her treatment of the figure in respect to the ground. And he would make such a presentation about this matter in such a way, that one could believe (if one did not know better) that Albers was discovering the Figure-Ground Principle (and potential for ambiguity} in that room at that very moment. No, he would not credit Gestalt in these moments. In this, he was (in his own words--and pronunciation) a bit of a Schwindler.

William Huff

William Huff on 6 August 2011

To all: I was going through other material today, and I found this oft repeated dictum of Albers. It was one of a list of his dictums. And this one is probably his most important one. He often also said a variation: Difference of what is factual and what is actual.

I am sure one would like to know how far back it goes, but at least to his Black Mountain days.


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The origin of art: The discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect.[1]________________________________________[1] Albers, Search versus Re-Search, Trinity Press, 10.

William


To the group, I just remembered that the Albers Foundation might have something to add. None of this may be too new, but it helps confirm other references.

William

Brenda Danilowitz on 8 August 2011

Dear William:Fred Horowitz has written quite a bit about Albers and Gestalt in our Book: Josef Albers: To Open Eyes. I am pretty sure you have the book, but maybe not.Anyway it seems that Albers did attend von Durkheim’s lecture’s at the Bauhaus, but I don’t believe he ever referred to Gestalt directly in his teaching [that would be entirely characteristic], though he employed the principles widely.Below is some of the information culled from Fred’s footnotes. Hope this helps.

BestBrenda

[1] Rudolf Arnheim is confident that Albers was “quite aware” of Gestalt psychology,

“particularly since his very concept of the interaction of things, composition and interaction, is what he got from Gestalt psychology. And whether he knew anybody in person of our group in Berlin, I’m not sure. But he probably read the books which were all around at that time.”

Albers invited Arnheim to New Haven to address the art students at Yale. Introducing Arnheim to a large audience, Albers playfully said, “so many of you quote Mr. Arnheim that I got sick and tired of it, and thought we might as well get it over with. So, here he is.” Arnheim recalls the introduction as “just perfectly beautiful. Nobody had ever done anything like that for me.” Arnheim, interview, 9 September 1995.

Karl Duncker, from Wolfgang Köhler’s Psychological Institute of the University of Berlin, gave a lecture and demonstration at the Bauhaus in 1929. Count Karlfried von Dürckheim, from the University of Leipzig, presented a series of lectures on Gestalt in 1930-1931. Albers informed art historian Marianne


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L. Teuber that he’d attended most of Dürkheim’s lectures. Teuber, telephone interview, 31 July 1998.

According to Alvin Eisenman, who headed the Graphic Design program at Yale, Albers “knew the names of all the Gestaltists. He talked about [Max] Wertheimer’s book all the time, and very frequently quoted from it.... He knew that stuff cold. He could tell you the page numbers of the patterns.” Telephone interviews, 20 February 2000 and 12 February 2001.

[1] “Visual experience is dynamic…. What a person or animal perceives is not only an arrangement of objects, of colors and shapes, of movements and sizes. It is, perhaps first of all, an interplay of directed tensions. These tensions are not something the observer adds, for reasons of his own, to static images. Rather, these tensions are as inherent in any percept as size, shape, location, or color. Because they have magnitude and direction, these tensions can be described as psychological ‘forces.’ ” Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1974), 11.

[1] Citing Paul Overy’s Kandinsky: The Language of the Eye (New York, Praeger, 1970), Rainer K. Wick notes that

“whether or not Kandinsky read the writings of the leading Gestalt psychologists in the twenties (i.e., Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka), Overy proceeds from the hypotheses [sic] that these ideals were constant topics of discussion in the intellectual atmosphere of the Bauhaus.” Wick, Teaching at the Bauhaus [Bauhaus-Pädagogik, 1982] (Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2000. Updated and substantially revised edition, with additional text by Gabriele Diana Grawe), 200.

Wick adds:

“According to an oral communication from Kurt Kranz on 19 January 1981 (Kranz was a student at the Bauhaus from 1930 to 1933), Kandinsky frequently mentioned in his course the names of the main representatives of the school of Gestalt psychology. He always made it clear, however, that the results of Gestalt psychology were merely a confirmation of his own earlier findings.” Wick, Teaching, note 77, 222.

Marianne L. Teuber demonstrates that psychological patterns used in the investigations of Gestaltists Max Wertheimer and Wilhelm Fuchs, published in 1923, found their way into Paul Klee’s preliminary course at the Bauhaus, and eventually, into his paintings, and notes that Albers explored forms based on Wertheimer’s illustrations of overlapping shapes and their illusion of transparency while at the Bauhaus and later. Teuber, “Blue Night by Paul Klee,” in Mary Henle, ed., Vision and Artifact, (New York: Springer Publishing Co., 1976), 131-151. Commenting that Klee’s lecture in Jena in 1924, later published as On Modern Art, (Faber and Faber, London, 1948), relies in part on Gestalt ideas,


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Teuber suggests that Albers could certainly have been introduced to Gestalt by Klee. Teuber, telephone interview, 31 July, 1998.

Brenda DanilowitzChief Curator, The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation88 Beacon Road, Bethany, CT [email protected]

Roy Behrens on 8 August 2011

To all-- I have been wanting to say to William Huff that I have greatly enjoyed the notes he sent out about the Bauhaus and Gestalt theory. His memories of Albers are simply wonderful, as was that delightful saying about “Difference of what is factual and what is actual.”

Albers apparently liked to play with words, as I also remember a story about he and Anni taking a walk at Black Mountain College and his asking her, when they saw a sign that said “pasture,” if that was the opposite of “future.”

These most recent notes from the Albers Foundation are also quite interesting. My own sense is that, while there may have been talk about Gestalt theory at the Bauhaus (and it does seem certain that von Durckheim lectured on the subject there), there didn’t have to be, because the concepts that were common to both Bauhauslers and Gestaltists can be traced to earlier influences that would have been widely known to both. For example, it’s more likely that Albers was influenced by French chemist Michel-Eugene Chevreul’s research of the simultaneous contrast of color in the mid 19th Century. Albers called these color effects “interactions,” but what more persuasive examples are there of the synergistic notion that “the whole is more than the sum of its parts.”

In 1964, when I studied in California with Weimar Bauhaus master potter Marguerite (Friedlander) Wildenhain, she too sounded as if she were a Gestaltist, but she never uttered the word, nor does it occur in her writings. Nine years later, in her autobiography (The Invisible Core: A Potter’s Life and Thoughts) she revealed that her insight had come from reading Taoist philosophy, especially the Tao Te Ching by Lao-tze. In particular, she quotes a famous passage in which Lao-tze states (paraphrasing of course) that the form of the wheel is not in the spokes, but in the space between the spokes, that the form of the pot is not in its walls, but in the space between the walls. Pertaining to this, a brilliant Chinese professor of mine once said that, to a Taoist, the most important part of golf is the hole.

A wealth of Asian ideas like these were widely known in the US and Europe in the latter decades of the 19th Century, through the influence of Japonisme, the Aesthetic Movement, and the Arts and Crafts Movement. One of the first and


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perhaps the most influential book on this was Arthur Wesley Dow’s Composition. In 1998, I tried to talk about all of this in an essay titled “Art, Design and Gestalt Theory,” which was published in Leonardo (MIT Press) and can now be read online at <http://www.leonardo.info/isast/articles/behrens.html>. Some of these same influences are discussed in minute detail in an astonishing book by Kevin Nute, called “Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan”. Finally, I believe that another influence on both the Bauhaus and the Gestaltists were the kindergarten teaching innovations of Friedrich Froebel. For much more detail on this, see Norman Brosterman’s “Inventing Kindergarten”.

Best, Roy Behrens

Lothar Spillmann on 8 August 2011

Dear Friends and Colleagues:I am amazed at the wealth of information supplied by all of you and the highly interesting anecdotal material that surfaced once the discussion got going. I wish somebody would take the collective correspondence of this group and forge it into a brief article that could be published in Leonardo, Gestalt Theory or any other appropriate journal.

In this way readers who were not privileged to participate in this exchange of ideas and memories would benefit. Marianne Teuber would have liked that, and her son Andreas, a philosopher at Brandeis, could be asked to add to it and comment.

I am two days away from my departure for Davis, CA, and therefore will keep any suggestions brief. But I will follow the discourse among you experts and continue to enjoy the delightful insights that arose from my initial inquiry to Prof. Stemberger some weeks ago. It is wonderful to see how quickly representatives of various fields got together and engaged in a most constructive and entertaining discussion. E-mail makes it possible.

Kind regards, Lothar


Roy and all, Thanks for your remarks, You bring up new memories.We forgot in these discussions till now about Chevreul. I never heard of Chevreul at Yale, but I was introduced to Chevreul by Bauhäusler Nonné-Schmidt at Ulm. The Nonne married Joost Schmidt and knew Albers all the way back to Berlin. Unfortunately, they were not friends, which is a different story. I cannot make any more definitive, direct contacts between the Bauhaus and knowledge of


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Chevreul, but we can read between the lines. Also, Albers loved the Goethe color triangle with the three primaries, three secondaries of the first order, and three tertiaries of the first order, which he put on his abbreviated publication of “Interaction.” I don’t know if Klee mentions Chevreul in “The Thinking Eye” or the second companion volume because there is no index; and today, I do not have the time to scan.

The story about the Pasture is great.

About the Lao-tzu quote: I believe that was well known at the Bauhaus. I may have heard it first from Gropius. This is, of course, Chinese, but many Masters in the early days dealt with Zorastrianism (more mystical). Albers has his own way of saying the Lao-tzu thing--in fact, two ways. (1) He would say that music isn’t so much the notes, or the beats, or the differences of timbre and crescendo, but he would say that it was the interval between two tones, etc. In fact, he would say that all music is structured on these four intervals. (2) he would hold up two fingers, then slowly bring the two fingers together until the space between his two parallel finger was the same width as his two fingers, then he would say: “One and one is three.”

If I am correct Marguerite Wildenhain did not go to Dessau, because pottery did not go to Dessau. But I would think that Taoism would have been contrary to Itten’s theosophy. Franz W. lived in Rochester, near my Univ. at Buffalo. A friend who gave me a miniature mug by Franz was going to introduce me to him, but he died before that was set up; in fact, I was to have got an introduction for Eck Neuman with him. I had a few letters from Marguerite about the early days, which I have given out special collections at UB.

Oh yes, Itten’s big formal issue was contrast; but his contrast is not as rich as Albers’s intervals.

WilliamPS I like Lothar’s suggestion.

Roy Behrens on 8 August 2011

That’s great. Here’s a brief addition to William’s observations about intervals: In recent years I have been showing my graphic design students a terrific documentary called Helvetica at <http://www.amazon.com/Helvetica-David-Carson/dp/B000VWEFP8/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1312838719&sr=1-1>. In it there are excerpts from an interview with Italian-born designer Massimo Vignelli. My favorite moment is when he points to a sheet of paper on which he had drawn some letters, and says: “Typography is not the letters. It is the space between the letters.”

Best Roy Behrens


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Roy R. Behrens, teaches graphic design, illustration, and design history at the University of Northern Iowa, USA. Member of the Advisory Board of Gestalt Theory Journal.

Brenda Danilowitz, Chief curator of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Bethany, Connecticut, USA.

William S. Huff, Professor Emeritus of Architecture at the State University of New York at Buffalo, USA.

Lothar Spillmann, Prof. Dr., till 2005 head of the Visual Psychophysics Laboratory, Brain Research Unit, at Freiburg University, Germany, teaches now at China Medical University in Taichung, Taiwan ROC. Member of the Advisory Board of Gestalt Theory Journal.

Gerhard Stemberger , Dr., sociologist, psychotherapist in Vienna, Executiv Editor of Gestalt Theory Journal.

Michael Wertheimer, Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Member of the Advisory Board of Gestalt Theory Journal.

gestalt theory and bauhaus – a correspondence between roy behrens, brenda danilowitz, william s....

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