Milchhof Arn­stadt. Bauhaus100.

100 years of modernism

For 100 years we have been dealing with ques­tions of design, which have been raised by modernity and which still fascinate us today. Ground­breaking and great things have arisen from it. But 100 years of modernity also mean 100 years of loss — of craft­smanship, of diversity of mate­rials, of local building tra­di­tions and of our ability to per­ceive dif­fe­rences and subt­leties. This exhi­bition follows facades, plaster, tiles, paper and por­celain in colour, structure and surface, and ques­tions the avant-garde’s gesture of sitting in front of a white sheet of paper in 1919.
The Milchhof by architect Martin Schwarz, who like many of his col­le­agues at the time created exciting modern archi­tecture without ever having been to the Bauhaus, shows how modernity and craft­smanship are com­pa­tible. The Milchhof as a coope­rative building also stands for the fact that good archi­tecture is always also social archi­tecture, visible from the outside through the emphasis on the hori­zontal: not sky-high for repre­sen­tation, but simple and self-con­tained for a function. The works of con­tem­porary artists con­tinue the theme of modernity. They show just how much the con­fron­tation with abs­traction, sim­plicity, ele­mentary formal lan­guage, rhythm and con­trast has shaped the world of the fine arts to this day.

Red. Coope­rative.

With the social move­ments from the middle of the 19th century onwards, savings, purchasing, explo­itation or pro­duction coope­ra­tives formed as a form of economy for the benefit of each of their members. In the 1920s, when it became clear that tuber­cu­losis was also trans­mitted by unt­reated milk, a coope­rative of over 80 dairy farmers from the region com­mis­sioned the architect Martin Schwarz to build the Milchhof Arn­stadt to supply the popu­lation with hygie­ni­cally perfect pro­ducts. The red part of the exhi­bition tells the story of the coope­rative on and beyond the Milchhof and shows the per­spec­tives of a coope­rative movement that is once again on the rise today.

Martin Schwarz

The architect Martin Schwarz was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1885. In 1911 he settled to Arn­stadt, which he shaped like no other in the years that fol­lowed. Important buil­dings were the syn­agogue of the city (1913 — 1938) or the Fürst­liches Gym­nasium of 1915. Martin Schwarz designed more than 20 buil­dings in Arn­stadt, always of high quality and in the style of the time. With the planning of the Milchhof Arn­stadt in 1928, Martin Schwarz com­pletely broke with his own formal lan­guage. Plenty of day­light, dairy-spe­cific func­tion­ality, an asym­me­trical cubature and the façade design with the distinctive MILCHHOF ARNSTADT let­tering make the building a model of modernity. The exhi­bition traces the archi­tect’s work through pho­to­graphic docu­men­tation of the stair­wells of 19 of his buil­dings, 17 of which still exist today.

White

Pig­ments, like spices, were once weighed with gold. The lead white used in painting for cen­turies was also highly toxic, so that it was only used spa­ringly. The che­mical paint industry made zinc white available from 1850 and titanium white from 1917. This meant that there were no longer any limits to the white surface in painting and archi­tecture. What was colorful for a long time became white. Kasimir Malevich called out to his artist friends in 1917: I have broken through the blue screen of the colour limi­ta­tions and have reached the white; floats after me, fellow pilots, into the depths. The white depth, the free infinity lies before you. In archi­tecture, too, white becomes the colour of libe­ration from the han­di­craft ballast whose tra­di­tions one no longer wanted to follow. The future is white, pure, straight­forward. In the inspired, as in the mono­tonous.

Tabula rasa

Germany was on the move in 1919. After the end of the First World War, people wanted to leave the old world behind and start anew. The time was ripe for a radical aes­thetic break that would incre­asingly con­tribute to the indus­tria­lization of society. In 1945, after the next lost war — the “dis­grace” this time also asso­ciated with pre­scribed shame — the break with the past could no longer be stopped.

What the war had not des­troyed fell victim to urban planning. Art Nouveau or Wil­hel­minian style, stucco or colour, his­to­ricism or ornament: sud­denly ever­y­thing was spoofed. Even today, the con­tempt for his­to­rical buil­dings is deeply inscribed in the DNA of German planners, admi­nis­tra­tions and archi­tects.

DIN

Sub­se­quent events such as the founding of the Bauhaus, which were con­sidered epochal incisions, are in fact part of pre­vious and par­allel deve­lo­p­ments. The desire for a more effective war economy and the indus­try’s need for stan­dar­dized pro­ducts led to the founding of the Stan­dards Com­mittee for Mecha­nical Engi­neering in May 1917.

The first DIN was published on 1 March 1918 and regu­lated the uni­formity of a mecha­nical con­necting part, the taper pin. In 1926, Hannes Meyer pos­tu­lated “the result is the standard product” in the spirit of DIN. In the meantime over 30,000 stan­dards have been drawn up in Germany. Appro­xi­m­ately 2000 stan­dards are added every year. The question has long been raised as to where the benefits and limits of stan­dar­dization lie — and whether any­thing that does not comply with DIN must fear for its right to exist.

Sur­faces. Haptics

Sim­plicity and straight­for­wardness, reduction and func­tion­ality are the ideals of modernism against the design tra­di­tions of the 19th century and craft­smanship, and they still are today. Many archi­tects of that time were always aware of the special importance of the choice of mate­rials and the design of sur­faces with these creative ideas.

The exhi­bition weiß. null­punkt der moderne. sees itself as a school of seeing. By means of various plaster fields and tiles, instal­la­tions and coll­ec­tions of por­celain and paper and the jux­ta­po­sition of tra­di­tio­nally fired and indus­trially pro­duced bricks, it makes the beauty and variety of hand­crafted sur­faces tan­gible.

Abs­traction

European art was an art of repre­sen­tation; the prot­ago­nists of modernism fought hard to find their way into abs­tract painting. In Islamic art, on the other hand, which is subject to the pro­hi­bition of images, abs­traction, orna­men­tation and cal­li­graphy play a central role. Both cul­tures share the ordering prin­ciple of writing. The situation is dif­ferent with the Amazir women’s carpets, which fasci­nated Paul Klee as “Berber carpets” and whose white varieties Le Cor­busier coll­ected. The abs­tract world of forms of these Moroccan carpets is a tra­dition cul­ti­vated for cen­turies, but here the abs­tract symbol replaces a culture of writing that does not know the culture of the Amazir. The mean­dering forms of these “tapis fous”, mocking the ornament as much as the script, are to be understood as the nar­rative of a fairy tale, whose themes are familiar to everyone and which are con­stantly reas­sembled.

The exhi­bition shows a coll­ection of these carpets and offers a world pre­miere of a film about the Ama­zir’s life today. On a knotting chair, visitors can take part in the creation of a carpet under their own gui­dance.

weiss. null­punkt der moderne. An exhi­bition of the archi­tec­tural monument Milchhof Arn­stadt GmbH on the occasion of the Bauhaus 100 anni­versary under the cura­torial direction of Judith Rüber.

Project Management. Jan Kobel

Texts. Judith Rüber und Jan Kobel

Pho­to­graphy. Jan Kobel

Con­tri­buting artists.

Hartmut Bechmann, glass artist and sculptor (1939 Ernsttal — 2013 Lauscha)
Angela Brandt, Pho­to­grapher (Essen, *1967 Stuttgart)
Philippe Derlin, sculptor (Düs­seldorf, *1998 Würzburg)
Angela Dwyer, painter (Berlin, *1961 Pal­merston, NZL)
Paolo Giudici, Pho­to­grapher (London, *1969 Padova, I)
Jan Kobel, pho­to­grapher and painter (Arn­stadt, *1960 Munich)
Markus Krug, sculptor (Munich, *1965 in Singen/Hohentwiel)
Sarah Kunze, goldsmith & textile designer (Stralsund, *1993 in Hei­delberg)
Martin Maleschka, Pho­to­grapher (Cottbus, *1982 Eisen­hüt­ten­stadt)
Eberhard Schrammen, painter and pho­to­grapher, (1886–1947, Bauhaus Weimar 1919–1925)
Pomona Zipser, sculptor (Berlin, *1958 Sibiu/Hermannstadt, ROM)

Program infor­mation. Here.

The rights to the repro­duc­tions of the works of art lie with the respective artist. Sup­ported by the State of Thu­ringia and the Bauhaus Asso­ciation of the States and the Foun­da­tions. The Milchhof Arn­stadt is part of the GRAND TOUR DER MODERNE www.grandtourdermoderne.de

Respon­sible His­to­rical monument Milchhof Arn­stadt GmbH GF Jan Kobel . Par­sonage 1 . D‑99310 Arn­stadt www.milchhof-arnstadt.de

We thank the Thü­ringer Staats­kan­zelei and the Bauhaus Koope­ration Berlin Dessau Weimar gGmbH