The cover of Walter Gropius's 1919 Bauhaus Manifesto, that rallying call for what would become the three Bauhauses, is famously graced by Lyonel Feininger's woodcutting Kathedrale, an ideogram for the "Wundertat der gotischen Kathedrale"1, the 'miracle of the Gothic cathedral', that archetype Gropius borrowed from John Ruskin to explain what good architecture is, why it is, how it arises, and thereby to visualise the path to the 'building of the future' via a 'new guild of craftsmen'2 Gropius demanded and that Bauhaus would lead.
A Kathedrale that today exists as a metaphor for the religious fervour that surrounds Bauhaus, its members and their works.
With the exhibition Sacristy at Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau Kang Sunkoo reflects on Bauhaus as religion and the religion of Bauhaus.......
Established in Weimar in 1919, Bauhaus was, famously, forced to relocate in 1925 on account of the NSDAP's rejection of their creative positions; creative positions many of which, as oft discussed in these dispatches, most recently from Bauhaus and National Socialism at Klassik Stiftung Weimar and most unequivocally from Design of the Third Reich at Design Museum Den Bosch, ‘s-Hertogenbosch and Power Space Violence. Planning and Building under National Socialism at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, the NSDAP themselves actively adopted, albeit with that disingenuous denial one would expect from the likes of the NSDAP. From a number of keen suitors, including Leipzig and Frankfurt, the institution's leaders choose Dessau for their new home; a choice that for all it may appear somewhat odd today, then put Bauhaus at the centre of a burgeoning, future-orientated, chemical and technological industrial landscape. A landscape a great many Bauhäusler employed to great, and enduring, effect.
And a landscape to which Walter Gropius added a new school building, one of numerous architectural works by Bauhäusler realised in and around Dessau; a Bauhaus Dessau school building reflective of Gropius's then positions on architecture, on the 'building of the future', that, and as discussed from Mehr als echt (More than real) by Jun Yang at Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, has become the high cathedral of Bauhaus, has become Feininger's Kathedrale, hallowed ground to which all pilger. A Bauhaus Dessau school building opened in December 1926 whose construction began in September 1925, and which from September 2025 will be a centrepiece for a plethora of events, installations and exhibitions planned in and around Dessau by way of celebrating, commemorating and reflecting upon Bauhaus Dessau's 100th anniversary, and the institution itself.
Ahead of those celebrations Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau are undertaking a little stage setting, are slowly introducing some of the themes and foci of the centenary year; the first step of which was Mehr als echt (More than real) which takes the furniture of Bauhaus and the Bauhäusler as the starting point for its explorations and reflections, with Sacristy Kang Sunkoo's starting point is much more the architecture of Bauhaus and the Bauhäusler.
An exhibition which greets you via Kang Sunkoo's work Antimension, an alter cloth proclaiming Eines neuen Glaubens, A New Faith, set before a steel-frame and glass window with a view out to and over Gropius's school/cathedral, out to and over the "kristallines Sinnbild eines neuen kommenden Glaubens"3, the 'crystalline symbol of a new coming faith' of Gropius's 1919 Manifesto; an alter cloth set before the geometry, constructivism and play with light and shade that through the photographs handed down to us, not least, and as discussed from Exposures at Kunsthalle Praha, the photographs of a Lucia Moholy, have become the defining view of and on Bauhaus and the architectural legacy of the Bauhäusler. Have become testaments of the Bauhaus faith.
An alter cloth that is also placed on the Dessau staircase where Oskar Schlemmer once immortalised Bauhaus Dessau as a female institution before (hi)story remembered it as a male institution. We'll leave you to make your own comparisons with gender participation, gender equality and gender (hi)story in global religions.
And an alter cloth that while, yes, possibly a little too obvious, certainly for our tastes, does very much warmly welcome you and confirms that one is about to enter a sacrosanct space. A sacrosanct space not framed by the opaque, artistic glass of Hans Theo Baumann's windows for Egon Eiermann's Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche in Berlin, but by the transparent, utilitarian, glass of Walter Gropius's 1920s Functionalist Modernism.
Much as the Christian and Buddhist faiths, those prominent faiths in Seoul born, Düsseldorf raised, Basel based, Kang Sunkoo's native South Korea, are built upon a trinity, so to is Kang Sunkoo's Sacristy built upon a trinity of glass, concrete and metal.
Specifically Kang Sunkoo has taken an original glass, concrete and metal object from the houses of Gropius's Dessau-Törten housing estate and set them within an artwork; or perhaps more accurately, has set the original Bauhaus materials in conversation with an artwork in the same material class by way of, certainly in our interpretation, seeking to stimulate debate not only on the glass, concrete and metal of Bauhaus beyond that which the conventional Bauhaus dialogue allows, but also as a challenge to approach Bauhaus beyond the physical glass, concrete and metal of its high cathedral and other shrines. Much as a Mehr als echt (More than real) challenged and challenges one to approach Bauhaus furniture beyond the physical chair, in particular beyond the physical steel tube chair.
As an art exhibition Sacristy is very much about the individual conversation with the space and the objects conserved therein; each and every visitor must find their own way both round the space and into the conversation between the late 1920s zinc bath from a so-called sieTö IV house type on the Dessau-Törten housing estate and the metal cross Peter by Kang Sunkoo. Are they, possibly, conversing on the various functions of metal, not least the practical function and the allegorical function that we don't always separate, often amalgamate as one, be that in context of the architecture of Bauhäusler, the furniture of Bauhäusler, cars, watches, ores, etc, or do an empty cross and empty bath both exist as that allegorical and physical moment after a cleansing but before the next dirtying. Or are you hearing something else.
Similarly the praying hands of Golgatha frozen in concrete could belong to the untold number of pilgrims to Dessau every year, worshipping the reinforced concrete beam from a sieTö I house type around which they silently congregate. Or they could be the clasped hands of a builder quietly reflecting at the wonder of novel building materials and construction processes in the shaping the 'building of the future' and by extrapolation the world of today and tomorrow; could be the "millionen Händen der Handwerker"4, 'millions of craftsmen's hands' who will build that world of tomorrow much as untold numbers of stone masons' hands once built the "Wundertat der gotischen Kathedrale" of the Middle Ages.
For his sacristy Kang Sunkoo has relied alone on the natural light that pours in through the curtain walls of the Bauhausgebäude's workshop wing, a concept of which we very much approve, even if it does mean that the work Monstranz will invariably have much more agency under a bright summer sky than the grey and overcast March sky under which we viewed it. A monstrance that rather than housing at its heart the host of the Christian Eucharistic presents a Luxfer glass panel as employed by Gropius in the sieTö II house type as a form of skylight, set by Kang Sunkoo atop a glass construction that seems to embody Feininger's Kathedrale, and that very much calls for the bright light of summer to skip and dance through its various layers from a profusion of refracted angles. But even without which is very much, or is for us, you may read it differently, a comment on the rituals of the devotion of Bauhaus, on the symbolism and vocabulary of the devotion of Bauhaus, on the processes of the devotion of Bauhaus. And for all of the necessity of strictly adhering to the strictly prescribed rituals, symbolism, vocabulary and processes of the celebration of the Bauhaus faith by way of confirming ones unquestioning adherence to that faith. Of that faith at the centre of all your thoughts and actions.
And which as a glass object whose appearance in, and relationship with, the space in which it stands will, we very much assume, continually change, is also a reminder that we all view the world through a lens, through a matrix, that only very rarely allows us to see directly that which is before us. A lens shaped by nature and nurture, by experience and by conditioning; that lens that means when we view an objective truth we see a subjective reality. And when we view the Bauhaus Dessau school building we see a cathedral.
A lens that in context of Bauhaus has been a long time in the forming: the quasi-religious fervour ain't in itself new, as, for example, noted, implied, in context of the Radio smow Bauhaus Playlist, the 1923 Weimar exhibition drew individuals from far afield as if to some religious festival, and often with a passion parallel to that of those who today pilger to Dessau and Weimar, one can argue a Marianne Brandt was converted by the experience, and she wasn't the only one. A quasi-religious fervour that the disciples of MoMA brought to America and cared for, formalised, simplified, while Europe battled. And although on its return to Europe it was primarily a faith, a freshly formalised and simplified faith, carried by a relatively small group of devotees, over the intervening decades that congregation has grown, one could argue exponentially so in the last couple of decades. Indeed, when viewed from another perspective, there is an argument to be made that the rejection of Bauhaus by the DDR authorities that began with the Formalism Debate of the early 1950s was analogous to the atheism of the DDR. How else can one explain the blasphemous 1960s renovation of Gropius's war damaged cathedral.
A lens, a collective lens, that through the refracted, simplified, formalised, perspective it allows on the Bauhauses is harmful, not only in its leading to misreadings of Bauhaus but in that stops us learning from Bauhaus, stops us bringing Bauhaus into our age, stops us engaging with it on our terms in our contexts. Leaves Bauhaus trapped in its cathedral, its artefacts held mute in a sacristy to be wondered at from a safe distance. Which is that other comparison of Bauhaus and religion one must make, as an unchanging contribution to an ever changing society. And which underscores the need to reform the lens through which we view Bauhaus.
Kang Sunkoo's Sacristy is a contemplative location to begin regrinding.
A location in which to reflect not only on Bauhaus and the Bauhäusler but also the process of mythologising, how from truths myths arise that then replace those truths, a process, arguably, analogous to, and potentially inter-related with, the forming, maintenance and reliability of memory reflected upon in and by Fairy Tale. Childhood in Lithuania during the late Soviet era at Kaunas Picture Gallery.
Reflections very much advanced by Kang Sunkoo's use of not only materials from the Törten housing estate, a Bauhaus project that, as with so many others in Dessau, stands in the shadow of Gropius's school/cathedral, and thus a reminder of the contemporary narrow focus on the Bauhauses, the need to grind the lens so that the view it enables is more expansive, but that also involves three objects — a zinc bath, a reinforced concrete joist and a Luxfer glass panel — that not only aren't in themselves direct objects, direct artefacts, of Bauhaus, are external, thus reminding that Bauhaus didn't exist in a bubble but was part of a much wider contemporary context on which it was also dependent, but also aren't objects you're unlikely to find in any of the myriad books that explain Bauhaus in exactly the same unquestioning, well-practised manner, like the retelling of a religious parable in a myriad of books. And objects not normally to be found in the Bauhaus sacristy. Thus a reminder of the contemporary flatness of the view of the Bauhauses, and the need to grind the lens so that the view it enables has a much greater depth.
And which means they are objects you are forced to engage with from within yourself, without the aid of an established narrative that tells you how to engage with them, or a cleric to whom to refer. And thus not to approach them as one normally approaches a sacristy, but exactly as one should approach not only the Bauhauses, but any moment in (hi)story, any artefact, any gospel, any Kathedrale. Free from preconceptions and liturgy. To find your own communion with that which before you.
Which may or may not be a position Martin Luther would have approved of in nearby Wittenberg.
The region around Dessau has not only a long industrial (hi)story, but has long been one for challenging religion, for questioning the conventions and rituals of religion, for empowering change in religion, the 100th anniversary of Bauhaus Dessau is an apposite moment for continuing that tradition.
And Sacristy, and Mehr als echt (More than Real), very engaging conduits for that advancing that challenging, questioning and empowering. Not least in dialogue with one another. And as preludes for approaching the Bauhaus Dessau centenary celebrations.
Kang Sunkoo Sacristy is scheduled to run at the Bauhausgebäude, Gropiusallee 38, 06846 Dessau-Roßlau until Sunday October 19th.
Mehr als echt (More than real) by Jun Yang should also be on in parallel, even if we're still unable to confirm an exact run time for it.
Further details can be found at https://bauhaus-dessau.de
1Walter Gropius, Was ist Baukunst?, Weimarer Blätter des Deutschen Nationaltheaters in Weimar für Theater, Kunst und Literatur, Nr. 9, Mai 1919
2Walter Gropis, Programm des Staatlichen Bauhauses Weimar, April 1919
3ibid
4ibid
