Oskar Schlemmer:

Body as Weapon

Beau Rhee
Department of Dance
Barnard College, Columbia University
Spring 2007

Abstract
We need number, measure, and law as armor and as a weapon,

lest we be swallowed up by chaos. 1

To understand the essence of der Bau, creative construction. Like the concept of Bau
itself, the stage is an orchestral complex which comes about only through the
cooperation of many forces. 2

In the summer of 1928, the Bauhaus School in Dessau, Germany offered a course
entitled Human, or Mensch taught by Oskar Schlemmer. Often considered one of the
most influential art schools of the twentieth century, the Bauhaus flourished between 1919
and 1933. Pedagogically, artistically, and theoretically, the Bauhaus was a powerhouse
that produced and exported new modernist ideas about art, industry, architecture, theater,
and design. Here, Oskar Schlemmer taught the Human course, which combined
visual, biological, and philosophical studies to create a full understanding of the man as a
social, bodily, and spiritual being. 3 Within the framework of Bauhaus pedagogy, the
existence of this class within the curriculum demonstrates the importance placed on the
human body. The artist and teacher most dedicated to this idea was Oskar Schlemmer. A
multifaceted artist and teacher who made paintings, sculptures, dances, and theater sets,
he centered his work around the human body and its interaction with the world. His

Oskar Schlemmer, Perspektiven address, quoted in Karin von Maur, The Art of Oskar
Schlemmer, in Oskar Schlemmer, ed. Arnold Lehman and Brenda Richardson, (Baltimore: The
Baltimore Art Museum, 1980) p. 120.

Oskar Schlemmer, Theater (Bhne), in Theater of the Bauhaus, ed. Walter Gropius and Arthur
Wensinger (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 81.
Oskar Schlemmer, Man: the Teaching Notes from the Bauhaus (Cambridge: M.I.T Press, 1972), p.
20.

closest companion and wife, Helena Tutien Tut Schlemmer, explains that the
guiding concept of his life was the idea: man within space. 4 His paradigm of the
body is evident not only in his Mensch curriculum but also in his essays Man and the
Art Figureand Theater, as well as in his Bauhaus Dances, works that can be
thought of as distilled crystallizations of his work at the Bauhaus from 1921 to 1930.
Schlemmers dance-theater works reveal that his project was to create a new, modern
understanding of the human body. His views on the body are inherently paradoxical:
radically abstract yet deeply humane, intensely simplified yet subtly complex. He
emerges as an artist deeply influenced by early modernist concerns, yet also immensely
dedicated to finding timeless, universal forms that eloquently expressed the
contemporary human condition. A historically informed and visually specific analysis of
his choreographic and theoretical work at the Bauhaus offers an understanding of his
unified, ordered, and profound allegory of the modern human body that transcended the
chaos of the modern era. The allegory of the human body is ultimately one of identity.

Tut Schlemmer, ed., Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer (Middletown: Wesleyan University
Press, 1972), p. xii.

Background
The dates of Schlemmers birth and death give us a brief glimpse of the range of
experiences that must have filled his life. Born in 1888, his life spanned one of the most
rapidly modernizing periods in European history. From 1914 to 1943, the year he died, he
lived through World War I, the Weimar Republic, and the first four years of World War II.
The rapid and chaotic modernization that took place doing his lifetime coincided with the
development of major artistic and intellectual movements. At a young age, shortly after
both his parents passed away, Oskar Schlemmer made a living for himself as an artisan,
working as a design craftsman in a wood-inlay factory. 5 Because of his excellent work, he
received a scholarship at the Stuttgart Akademie der Bildenden Kunst (Stuttgart Academy
of the Plastic Arts), where he studied from 1906 to 1911. 6 He developed an extremely
important and influential relationship with his teacher Adolf Hlzel, a painter linked to the
German Werkbund and the head of the Stuttgart Akademie. Hlzels theoretically rich
Werkbund philosophy concerning the aestheticization of the objects of everyday modern
life greatly influenced Schlemmer, giving him an early exposure to deeply theoretically
grounded art practices. 7 He was one of Holzels star students; Oskar Schlemmer and
Willi Baumeister painted the murals for the main pavilion of the Cologne Werkbund

6
7

Oskar Schlemmer, ed. Arnold Lehman and Brenda Richardson, (Baltimore: The Baltimore Art
Museum, 1980) p. 195.
Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, p. 3.
Vernon Lidtke, Twentieth Century Germany, in Oskar Schlemmer, ed. Arnold Lehman and
Brenda Richardson (Baltimore: The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1986), p. 29.

exhibition. The ideas of the German Werkbund involved, above all, a search for a unique
German style in terms of design aesthetic and theory in direct relationship with the rapid
industrialization of Germany at the turn of the twentieth century. Founded in 1907, the
Werkbund aspired to a cooperation of art, industry and crafts in the ennoblement of
commercial activity by means of education, propaganda, and a united stand on pertinent
questions. 8 This cooperation must have been one of the foundational ideas that
Schlemmer encountered with Hlzel; an instance of early modernist thinking that
undoubtedly influenced his own practices. After studying at the Akademie, Schlemmer
founded the Neckarstrae Gallery, which was the first gallery to exhibit modern Cubist
paintings in Stuttgart, an early display of the dedication to Modernism that continued
throughout his life. 9
From 1914 to 1918, he served in World War I. He served briefly in the field as a
soldier, but worked mainly as a mapmaker. He does not seem to have had a terribly
disturbing war experience. In a letter to his closest friend, Otto Meyer, he humorously
wrote of his mapmaking work (which involved aerial photography): I hope that
something positive comes of all these negatives. 10 Although serving in the war no
doubt came with dark encounters, his mapmaking job gave him much time and freedom;
his journals are rich with entries on art movements throughout Europe (Futurism, Cubism,
8

Heinrich Waentig: Wirtscahft und Kunst, (Jena, 1909) p.47 quoted in Magdalena Droste, Bauhaus,
(New York: Taschen, 2005) p. 12.
9
Tut Schlemmer, Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, p. 5.
10
Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, p. 60

Dada) and on his own artistic identity and development.

In 1921, Schlemmer met Walter Gropius, the architect who was head of the
Bauhaus at the time, who hired him as a Master of Form of the Bauhaus, Weimar in 1921.
Schlemmer was joined that same year at the Bauhaus by Paul Klee. Although the
Bauhaus moved twice, once to Dessau in 1925 and to Berlin in 1930, Schlemmer
remained at the school until early 1930, when it came under attack from the increasingly
vociferous Nazis; three years later, it closed down in 1933. 11 His most productive years
as an artist coincided with his career at the Bauhaus. Furthermore, his personal life
bloomed at the institution. He and Tut Schlemmer had three children there, and enjoyed a
rich social life surrounded by other Bauhaus families. Schlemmer was, after all, the
official party planner of the Bauhaus, planning some ingenious parties such as Silent
Night (where the rule of the party was to communicate by gesture and not words).
Although life was not monetarily plentiful at the Bauhaus, it was certainly intellectually and
emotionally satisfying for Schlemmer. Beginning in 1933, when Hitler came to power,
Schlemmer found it impossible to support himself and his family with his artwork alone
and struggled to find odd teaching and painting jobs. He died in Stuttgart in 1943.
To understand Schlemmers work, one must explore the world of the Bauhaus,
which existed from 1919 to 1933.Bauhausmeans House of Construction in

11

Man and Mask, prod. and dir. Gottfried Just, 40 min., Bavaria Atelier GMBH Production , 1968,
videocassette.

German. Based on the structure of Medieval communities where artisans lived and
worked together, the Bauhaus was conceived as a school that aimed to dissolve the
sharp line between artist and craftsman so that a whole range of artistic media would
exist together in unity. Walter Gropius, the author of the Bauhaus manifesto and the
founder of the school, famously stated that the Bauhaus community would work without
a retreat into the ivory tower, and look for a new synthesis of art and modern
technology. 12 This progressive and ambitious institution gathered together artists/
teachers of many different movements; indeed, Kandinsky (a Transcendentalist) taught
painting; Laszlo Moholy-Nagy innovative photography and photomontage; Paul Klee color
and form classes; Marcel Breuer design, while de Stijl artist Theo van Doesburg played
an integral role in determining the course program. 13 Unlike Paris, Weimar was a small
provincial city, so this kind of internationalism shows the appeal of Gropius ideas to a
wide range of artists, as well as the social and artistic openness of the Bauhaus. A very
early member of this community, Schlemmer was able to pursue his vision of a new
painting and a new theater through the intellectual and material resources of the Bauhaus.
The politics of the Bauhaus were decidedly left-wing and Socialist. The idea of
community that permeated Bauhaus art and life can be seen from its founding manifesto
written by Gropius. Let us together create the new building of the future, which will be
12

13

Walter Gropius, Introduction,in Theater of the Bauhaus, ed. Walter Gropius and Arthur
Wensinger (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 7.
Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004), p. 123-124.

everything in one form. Architecture and sculpture and painting. 14 In this manifesto,
building is not only an artistic and intellectual activity, but also a social one. Building
leveled the traditional distinction between bourgeois artist and proletarian worker and
united them under a new concept and activity. The Bauhaus hierarchy of apprentice and
master (student and teacher) reveals the sociological connections to the Medieval guilds
on which Gropius modeled the school. Furthermore, the social structure of the Bauhaus,
within the context of prevailing German cultural norms, which emphasized democratic
rather than hierarchical relationships, marks the school as a type of social experiment.
Schlemmer, though much more interested in intellectual and artistic endeavors
than political ones, was clearly aligned with the left in politics. In college he participated
in Socialist demonstrations; he supported a leveling of class structures and admired the
Russians for their revolution in 1917. 15 The German revolution [is] a pale imitation of the
Russian; we shall be lucky to get a measly democracy, he writes on January 25,
1919. 16 One can find these socialist ideas in Bauhaus aesthetic philosophies; thus,
Schlemmers ideas and works must also be understood in the context of this leftist
political stance. Much of his work is imbued with a knowledge of Socialist ideas of
community as well as a knowledge of post-revolutionary ideas and art, such as
Constructivism.
14

15
16

Walter Gropius, Bauhaus Manifesto, quoted in Magdalena Droste, Bauhaus (New York: Taschen,
2005) p. 10.
Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, p. 65
Ibid.

Gropius appointed Schlemmer as the director of the sculpture and mural studios
in 1921. 17 Schlemmer initially worked on experimental theater with Lothar Schreyer, who
was the first director of the stage workshop, but later become the director of the Bauhaus
stage in 1923. 18 His important and early work, The Triadic Ballet was conceived and
choreographed from 1918 to 1921, and premiered at the Stuttgart Landestheater in
1922. 19 The Bauhaus Dances, choreographed between 1923 and 1928, are more
representative of the artistic and theoretical work that would occupy him while teaching at
the Bauhaus. 20 A series of short dances consisting mainly of solos, duets, and trios, The
Bauhaus Dances are named simply, with titles such as Gesture Dance, Hoop Dance, Pole
Dance, and Space Dance. Although Schlemmer remained a painter throughout his life,
dance was a medium that allowed him to explore his primary theoretical and artistic
interest: the human figure. Furthermore, dance seems to have marked an artistic
progression from the two dimensional medium of painting to a more spatially oriented
practice. In a letter to his great friend Otto Meyer, written from a battlefield in February
1918, Schlemmer states: I certainly see great possibilities in the realm of ballet and
pantomime I believe this independent branch of the theatrical arts will provide the

17
18
19
20

Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, p. 93.

Ibid.
Ibid.
Debra McCall, Reconstructing Schlemmers Bauhaus Dances, in Oskar Schlemmer, ed.
Arnold Lehman and Brenda Richardson (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1986), p. 150.

impetus for a renewal. 21 Schlemmer was not a trained ballet dancer, nor was he
particularly interested in dance as a young man, but this newfound interest quickly
bloomed into a life of its own, and by 1927, he joined Rudolf Laban at the Magdeburg
Dance Congress. 22 From the years 1923 onward, he also began to write and lecture more
about dance and theater. Essays such as Man and the Art Figure (Kunstfigur) and
Theater (Bhne) are examples of how he continually tried to theorize his developing
choreographic ideas. As Schlemmers work matured with time, his visions formed a
choreographic vocabulary that existed as a theatrical embodiment of Bauhaus concerns.
More importantly, though, his choreographic language also signified Schlemmers ideas
about his understanding of the human body as a vessel to creating a modern allegory of
human identity.

21
22

Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, p. 49.

McCall, Reconstructing Schlemmers Bauhaus Dances, p.150.

10

The Bauhaus Dances: Form and Content

In the spirit of keeping the art at the center of study, I would like to first examine
Schlemmers The Bauhaus Dances. This set of short dances was choreographed between
1923 and 1928, and performed at the Bauhaus theaters. The Bauhaus Dances best exemplify a
unique dark humor that Schlemmer employed to illuminate certain aspects of the modern human
condition. This humor in the choreography is a strategy that is both socially and politically
pointed. The critical responses to The Bauhaus Dances, though, rarely comment on this aspect
of Schlemmers work. I aim to provide a re-interpretation of The Bauhaus Dances by focusing
on the trios.
The Bauhaus Dances refers to the group of dances Schlemmer choreographed while
teaching the Bauhaus Theater Workshop from years 1923 to 1929. The main known dances
among these are nine dances comprised of four solos, four trios, and one chorus piece that were
reconstructed by Debra McCall and Andreas Weininger in 1982, as well as by Albert Flocon,
Ludwig Grote, Tut Schlemmer, and Hannes Winkler in 1968. This earlier reconstruction was
made into the video Man and Mask, which is the basis of all visual analysis in this paper.
Although his Triadic Ballet is the most well known and more often reconstructed work, The
Bauhaus Dances are his later, more distilled works that best reflect his theories and work at the
Bauhaus Theater Workshop.
Walter Gropius thought of closing down this department for financial reasons, but

11

Schlemmer protested loudly against this decision, and in 1927 the theater reappeared officially
on the Bauhaus Dessau campus roster of classes.23 Schlemmer worked intensively with the
students who took Theater classes from 1927 to 1929. Some of the students he worked with were
Lux Feininger, Andreas Weininger, Werner Siedhoff, Walter Kaminsky, Manda von Kreibig, and
Karla Grosch. Although none were trained in ballet from an early age, the Bauhaus offered
gymnastics and movement classes that the theater students were strongly encouraged to take.
In 1929, this group of Theater Workshop students and Schlemmer made a tour of Germany and
Switzerland, receiving a large amount of success and attention. When Hannes Meyer took over
Walter Gropius position, however, the budget for theater was reduced. Schlemmer had to give
up his elaborate costumes and sets and the students formed an extremely political, Piscatorian
theater called The Young Group which was heavily inspired by Soviet theater and minimally by
Schlemmers work.24
What seems particularly alarming about the reception of Debra McCalls 1982
reconstruction of Schlemmers Bauhaus Dances in the United States is the flat consensus on
the abstraction and metaphysical qualities of Schlemmers theater that seems to drain the
cultural importance of Schlemmers work. In a New York Times review on October 31, 1982,
Anna Kisselgoff does little more than situate Schlemmer within a rather uninteresting gloss of the
Bauhaus and suggests that it would be useful to see the metaphysical dimension behind

23
24

Magdalene Droste, Bauhaus p. 158

Magdalene Droste, Bauhaus p. 186.

12

Schlemmer's own abstract dance theater.25 D.S. Moyinans article on the Bauhaus Dances
published in the Autumn 1984 issue of The Drama Review also disappointingly does little more
than quote McCall and describe her reconstruction process, rather than offering any historical or
thematic interpretation of the work. An article by Susanne Lahusen published in Dance Research
in Autumn 1986 concludes rather anticlimactically with this point: Schlemmer had sensed that
his abstract style was too avant-garde for the dance world of his time.26 If Lahusen had
considered that Nijinskys The Rite of Spring and Malevichs Victory Over the Sun both
premiered in 1913, or that The Tradic Ballet premiered in 1922, she would have understood that
The Bauhaus Dances were in no way abstract works that sprung out of the blue, but were
developed from well established modernist ideas about the body and theater. McCall gives a
slightly more sophisticated reading of his work when she speaks of the spirit of play,
playfulness of the characters. Theyre like big adult-sized puppets. Each of them has character
and temperament.27
What takes the Bauhaus Dances beyond the level of conceptual visual play with abstract
forms is the level at which Schlemmer engages with a dark humor that creates a space that is at
once orderly but inexplicably dangerous, a dark humor that brings to life characters that seem to
25

Anna Kisselgoff, They Created Dance Works at the Bauhaus, too The New York Times.
October 31, 1982.

26

Susanne Lahusen. Oskar Schlemmer: Mechanical Ballets? Dance Research: The Journal of
the Society for Dance Research, Vol. 4, No. 2. (Autumn, 1986), p. 76.

27

D. S. Moynihan. Oskar Schlemmers Bauhaus Dances: Debra McCalls Reconstructions

The Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 28, No. 3, Reconstruction. (Autumn, 1984). p. 51.

13

hide behind puffy protective costumes and beautiful (but often frightening) masks. I argue that
abstraction of the body is merely a means to create a body of works that point to the vulnerability
of the modern human condition. Although the Bauhaus Dances do have solos, the longer threeminute pieces are always trios. Rather than exploring themes of an individual man finding his
identity, or a relationship between two people, Schlemmer chooses a number that he believes
implies the collective, or the larger social matrix. When asked why he named his longer work The
Triadic Ballet, Schlemmer explained: Because three is a supremely important, prominent
number, within which egotistic one and dualistic contrast are transcended, giving way to the
collective (July 5, 1926).28 It is within this collective, then, that Schlemmers humor operates
at its most incisive and critical level.
The costumes most frequently worn in The Bauhaus Dances are padded uniforms that
hide the natural contour of the individual body and make each dancer appear as though the
body were a prototype. According to Andreas Weininger and Lux Feininger, the costumes were
made of colored linen and quilting.29 Usually, dancers are differentiated by different colored
costumes. The curved shape of the unitard makes it impossibly to differentiate the gender of the
performers. These curved prototypes of bodies are found in Schlemmers painting as well. On
canvas, his figures (regardless of gender) have bulging chests and hips; often the only
differentiation from one figure to the other is found in the hairstyle or clothing. For the most part,

28
29

Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, p. 196.

Moynihan, D.S. Oskar Schlemmers Bauhaus Dances: Debra McCalls Reconstruction, p
55.

14

the nude figure remains a set of distilled, curved, non-gendered forms. Most importantly, on
stage, the element of padding both humorously and ominously functions as a protective layer
from the outside world. Clothing functions in society as a both functional and cultural item. On
stage, however, costumes take on a mostly aesthetic role, beyond the need to allow movement.
It is a darkly humorous statement when a costume functions primarily as a protective layer; it
signals that the space outside of the body present both physical and psychological danger.
Schlemmers constumes were directly inspired by Russian Constructivist clothing experiments
and costumes. Because of Schlemmers admiration of the Russians as well as the influence of
Constructivism on Bauhaus thinking, it is extremely likely that Constructivism influenced his
costume choices. The aesthetic of Schlemmers padded body suits matches the unitard suits
or prozhodezha worksuits that the Constructivists wore, originally designed by Varvara
Stepanova for Rodchenko.30
Schlemmers masks are also important to consider, especially when determining the
type of subjectivity the performer on stage is projecting. As the costumes do to the body,
Schlemmers masks reduce individual features from the human face and make the face of the
performer appear as a type. Rather than, as in the tradition of European theater and opera,
which conveys the persona of an individual character, Schlemmer explores the possibility of an
establishment of a type of figure that could serve as a metaphor for a broad range of people. In

30

Christine Lodder, Russian Constructivism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983) p. 212.

15

this case, Schlemmers knowledge of non-European theater traditions significantly influenced

his emphasis on the type over the individual; he states that his modelscan be found in the
Javanese, the Japanese, and the Chinese theater, rather than in the European theater of
today.31
In terms of movement, Schlemmer often employs humor as a way to comment critically
on the social and political conditions of his time, with different emphases and concerns
according to each dance. The extreme seriality of Schlemmers costumes and the seemingly
restricted movement all function as results of Schlemmers attempt to show an ever more
frightening and controlling society where human weakness, deception, violence is augmented by
the outside world. The relevance the themes Schlemmer addressed with his Bauhaus Dances
have to our own society is surprising and incisive. Among the five trios, I will be discussing four
dances: Space Dance, Gesture Dance, Game of Bricks, and Flats Dance.
The cues in Space Dance, given to the red dancer by the blue dancers forty-five
degree rotation, begins a sequence in which this forty-five degree rotation by one dancer cues
another dancer into movement. This cue is the center around which the dancers relationships
twist and turn; the sequence of fifteen cues that constitute this dance creates extremely
interesting timing sequences that play with the different speeds in which each of the dancers
move. For example, at one moment, the red dancer gives the cue for both yellow and blue to

31

Oskar Schlemmer, Theater (Bhne), in Theater of the Bauhaus, ed. Walter Gropius and Arthur
Wensinger (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) p. 101.

16

move; because yellow moves about three times faster than blue, yellow ends up traversing three
times as much space. Yellow takes interesting diagonal patterns while the blue dancer plods on
a straight line. Through speed and patterning, Schlemmer is able to use contrast and humor in
his work. One extremely interesting moment is towards the end, when a cue creates a
dangerously close collision between the three moving bodies, but the respective speeds in
which they move stops the possible collision or contact. This moment is at once eminently
dangerous but also very humorous, as it seems as though the whole system of the cue that the
piece rests on will ultimately fail; however, the feeling of suspense is overcome by a prevailing
calm. This moment that almost breaks the calm that Schlemmer sets up is both humorous and
critical. This humor is dependent on a tension between a greater order maintaining its structure
and the possibility of its complete demise. Furthermore, this moment calls to attention the
disconnect between the dancers on stage; this greater order seems one that unites the dancers
together in terms of their tasks, but separates them in terms of human contact.
Gesture Dance is another trio, with three characters who wear separate colorsyellow, blue, and red. Yellow opens the piece, striding aggressively on stage from stage right.
After hopping around his seat, he sits. Then Red enters from the upstage right, walking a little
slower, but with purpose. He does four grand battements around his seat, then sits down.
Strangely enough, then Blue enters from stage left, dragging his body with his arms in a push up
position and then hops in front of his bench. At this moment, all three make a strange zzzzz

17

noise and sit down in unison. Then begins a contorted, strange conversation. Yellow speaks in a
hysterically high whisper to Red, behind a secretive hand. Both

burst out laughing, hitting their

hands on the ground and throwing their heads back to express their glee. They look at each
other, and rub their hands together as though plotting some sort of scheme. Red leans over and
then tells something to Blue. Upon hearing what Red says, both Red and Blue sway in laughter,
then their laughter escalates until they laugh in a violently percussive rhythm while bouncing on
their chairs. When the laughter stops, the three get up and swirl together in movement. A whistle
blows from afar; they separate and walk for a while in a circle. Then, Yellow signals for the other
two to stop. They stop, and the three link hands, and perform a fairly cheerful maypole dance.
Then, they go off as they came in, Red and Yellow exit stage right, and Blue to stage left.
This piece functions as a comment on the secrecy and unreliability of human
communication, especially those conversations that build power structures or hierarchies
between people. Communication never happens within this collective; rather, it is a decree that
unites these three in movement, whether it is the whistle or Yellows gesture. By the end of the
piece, it is Yellow who holds the power over Red and Blue. One could read this as a piece that
shows how one person can essentially construct his own power over a group of people. This is,
of course, a frightening and incisive insight- probably coming from Schlemmers experience
with the chaos and corruption of Weimar Republic politics.
Already, an analysis of Schlemmers two trios show that he was not an aesthete

18

concerned only with making beautiful abstract forms. Behind what seems only playful and
inpenetrable mechanical gestures, there is a certain severity and alarming seriousness. The two
other trios, Game of Bricks and Flats Dance also address issues of identity and power
construction.
Game of Bricks is an architectural piece; one can almost imagine the architecturally
inclined faculty at the Bauhaus viewing the piece with great glee. In a way, this piece seems to
presuppose Judson Dance Theaters task-oriented performances. The main action involves the
three dancers arranging large cubes in various arrangements. Each of the cubes six sides are
painted red, yellow, blue, white, black, and grey. The piece opens with all three primary colors of
the cubes equally displayed. Throughout the beginning of the piece, though, the number of
cubes corresponding to each character seems to signify the amount of control or power that
character has. The title Game of Bricks could be seen as a metaphor for how construction and
architecture is a domain (or game) of control. The conflict occurs when Yellow and Blue decide
to collaborate and build a structure together. They attempt to coalesce Red to give them more
cubes to assist them in building their structure. However, Red refuses to conform and
surprisingly, Red ends up ordering the other two around. Reds movements are brave and
charismatic. Under Reds control, the three build a pyramidal structure, which they push to
rotate when completed. The rotation shows the audience that the structure represents all three
colors equally! The piece seems a hopeful comment on leadership- that when the right person

19

holds power over a group of people, a collective can make a beautiful and equally
representative structure.
Flats Dance is perhaps the darkest of the five trios. Rather than wear different
colored costumes, three dancers wear grey padded costumes and wear white gloves and white
masks. The masks are flat and have holes as eyes and a line for a mouth. The audience does not
see the bodies of the dancers until the end; in the beginning all one sees of the bodies are the
hands, feet, and masks of the dancer floating around the colored planes. The field of movement
is on a plane just as flat as the masks the dancers wear. They hide behind the red, yellow, and
blue planes, playing a game of hide and seek. Individuality has been wiped out- the shifting and
oscillating planes comprise a beautiful visual puzzle. At the end, the game of hide and seek is
over, and the three grey bodies reveal themselves. At this moment, the dancer on stage left
shoots the one who stands center. This dancer falls, and the dancer stage right catches the
fallen body. The sheer unexpected violence after the neutrality and abstraction of the shifting
colored planes is shocking. This is a comment on the danger of revealing identity in a society
where people remain hidden behind identically reproduced masks, a society in which revealing
who you are can potentially lead to death.
If indeed Schlemmers main concern is, as Tut Schlemmer puts it, man and
space, than what kind of man and what kind of space does his work suggest? Upon a closer
reading of the way in which humor operates in The Bauhaus Dances, it seems impossible to

20

write off Schlemmers ideas of man and space as inapplicable aesthetic theorizations, or as
Kisselgoff, the New York Times author, suggested in 1982, to understand his work through the
metaphysical dimension behind [his] abstract dance theater. The space on stage in
Schlemmers dances, organized by the neat grid on stage, oscillates and shivers between a
rigid order and unexpected moments of madness and chaos. It is not as though the organized
grid space of the space were just a clean blank slate; rather, it is textured with an immanent
sense of danger and unpredictability. One must read Schlemmers conception of the body,
then, revealing a similar type of oscillation. Even if the literature on his work emphasizes the
abstract form of his costumes and movement, we must consider what paradigm of the body the
costumes and movement construct. Similarly to the stage space, the costumes at once hide and
heighten the characteristics of the characters on stage, illuminating often beautiful and often
traumatic insights.

21

The Bauhaus Dances: Dance and Architecture

When analyzing the two most iconic Schlemmer essays, one sees that the oscillation
between rigidity and chaos in Schlemmers pieces stemmed from a very specific approach to
theater. That is, he theorized theater through two seemingly opposed strategies- dance and
architecture. He not only theorizes the theater but also the human body through these two
fundamentally contrasting disciplines. The body seems theorized and rendered somewhere
between a bodily organism and a rigid structure.
In the essay Man and the Art Figure, Schlemmer discusses the dancer as the
central figure in the theater: he opens by stating that the history of the theater is the history of
the transfiguration of the human form.32 In the essay Theater, however, Schlemmer states
that the stage is above all an architectonic spatial organism where all things happening to it
and within it exist in a spatially conditioned relationship. One could see both his writing and
his work, then, as embodiments of the very conflict between the organic and the mechanic. This
very tension is a historical question of Schlemmers time, apparent in Dada and Surrealism
movements, in which artists questioned the very basis of human subjectivity in relationship to
increasing mechanization. The Dadaists were interested in the notion of chance operated art
making, where the external system of events determined the work of art as opposed to the
subjectivity of the artist. Marcel Duchamps notes on the readymade best exemplify this

32

Oskar Schlemmer, Man and the Art Figure, in Theater of the Bauhaus, ed. Walter Gropius and
Arthur Wensinger (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) p. 17.

22

attitude:
By planning for a moment to come (on such a day, such a date, such a
minute), to inscribe a readymadeThe important thing then is just
this matter of timing, this snapshot effect, like a speech delivered on no
matter what occasion but at such and such an hour. It is a kind of
rendezvous. Naturally inscribe that date, hour, minute on the readymade
as information.33
It is as though the work of art has become a mechanical object, one that can be produced
instantaneously provided the conditions allow. Photography also played an important role in both
Dadaist and Surrealist discourse. Duchamp mentions the snapshot effect in the quote
above, pointing to the change in artistic process the mechanical tool of photography had to the
process of art making. Walter Benjamins famous Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
comments on the fact that the reproducibility of photography strips away the notion of a work of
arts distinct and unique sense of aura and cult value, and instead the camera intervenes
with the resources of its lowering and liftings, its interruptions and isolations, its extensions and
accelerationsthe camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to
unconscious impulses.34 That is, the mechanical often replaces, magnifies, or surpasses the
human consciousness and thus affects the very state of human subjectivity.
It is Schlemmers exploration of this tension, then, between the mechanic and the
human in his choreographic work that provides rich material for a formal analysis of the
choreography not only in terms of content, as was explored in Chapter One, but also in terms of

33

34

Marcel Duchamp, Salt Seller: The Writings of Marcel Duchamp (New York: Oxford University Press,
1973) p 32.
Walter Benjamin, Illuminations trans. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1968) p. 237.

23

the very physical conception of the human body. Beyond the dark content and sarcastic humor
of the piece, the body itself seems to hinge between either extremely mechanic and automatic
movements or extremely recognizable everyday human gestures. Often, the sharp distinction
between machinelike movements and human gesture disintegrates, and thus the very distinction
between human and machine seems to disintegrate. In Gesture Dance, the sardonic laughter is
executed with such rhythmic certainty that it seems to almost reference the movement of a
machine. Or, in Game of Bricks, as the dancers move the bricks around the space, their
movement is so extremely controlled that the every day gestures seem to oscillate between
automatism and familiarity. To Schlemmer, the body is both an organic and mechanical entity
and is characterized both by its own internal laws but also its response to external space.
In Schlemmers case, then, the external space surrounding the organic body
seems particularly rigid and structured, limiting the body to certain square or linear types of
movement. This conception of space can be understood as his architectural understanding of
theatrical space. The Bauhaus was an institution dedicated to architecture. However, many of
the architectural ideas discussed at the Bauhaus can be traced back to the earlier Werkbund
and De Stijl movements. After all, Walter Gropius, who trained originally with the German
Werkbund group, was the director of the school from 1919 to 1927. Theo van Doesberg, a key
figure in the De Stijl movement, also taught at the Bauhaus from 1922 to 1924.
The iconic Werkbund building, Fagus Shoe Factory from 1912, designed by Walter

24

Gropius, is a coining example of the Werkbund architecture that directly influenced Bauhaus
building aesthetics and, ultimately, Schlemmers own conception of space. The Fagus Shoe
Factory was one of the first explorations in architectural building in exclusively glass and steel.
Though this aesthetic has now become the prototype for commercial skyscraper building, at the
time of the Factorys conception, glass was thought of as an almost transcendental material
that could transform a dark, damp interior space into a bright, transparent one. This idea was
particularly powerful in that glass could transform the usually miserable working environment of a
factory into an almost pleasurable one. At the same time, though, the steel grid emphasized the
mechanical, industrial, disciplined structure of the building as well as the very internal
mechanisms of the factory. The space was both open to external light but at the same time was
cohered by the intense internal logic and rigor of the grid. The constant reiteration of the grid
within the factory, then, could be seen as an architectural quotation relating the space of the
factory to a greater idea of order, industry, and discipline. In this way, the structure is not a selfcontained whole, but the logic of an external order determines the behavior of this structure.
One could look to De Stijl works to see further explorations of breaking apart an internally
cohesive architecture. The De Stijl movement was centralized in Holland and took root by about
1917. De Stijl simply means The Style, and the aim of the movement was to create a
common language of contemporary material forms that were appropriate for the times. Some of
the key figures included Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, and Gerrit Thomas Rietveld. From

25

one of their proclamations: Under the supremacy of materialism, handicraft reduced men to
the level of machines; the proper tendency for the medium (in the sense of cultural development)
is as the unique medium of the very opposite, social liberation.35 Indeed, when one looks at an
early Gerrit Thomas Rietveld design Red/Blue Chair from 1918, one sees the rigid order of the
grid established by earlier movements dispersed by what seems to be a liberation of the grid
from predictability. The back of the seat is a floating diagonal plane; the black wood planks that
hold the chair together are painted yellow at the ends, creating a further sense of movement. It is
as though this design is not simply reiterating the order of the grid, but is emphasizing the
movement possible in the reconstruction or retheorization of the grid. Theo van Doesburgs
Spatial Diagram for a House from 1924 is another example of the De Stijl aesthetic where a
predictable organization of planes breaks down, and the planes seem to hover asymmetrically
between each other as though caught in motion. It is as though a greater logic of forms cannot
be pinned down and stabilized; rather, the aesthetic of the De Stijl points to the possibility of
movement and change within a seemingly closed system.
The space Schlemmer creates on stage, then, can be related to both Werkbund and
De Stijl philosophies. Especially in The Bauhaus Dances, Schlemmer literally draws a white grid
on the stage that rigorously orders the movement and relationships of the dancers on stage.
However, the movement makes apparent that this grid is there to call attention to the moments in

35

William Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (New York: Phaidon, 1996) p. 156.

26

which the order of this grid is shattered. In Schlemmers work, then, the body reacts to this
architectural space in a both critical and complicit way. Often it seems as though the body is
simply an organism repeating the rules of the space around it, like a factory worker constantly
repeats the hierarchical logic of a factory. Amidst this passive repetition, Schlemmer employs
everyday gestural movement that eerily calls to attention the human subject hidden deep within
the bulky cushions of the costume, the seemingly endlessly repetitive following of the grid. The
body is at once a receptacle that appears pre-coded to follow certain motions and at once a
being with spontaneous communicative impulses. This dual subjectivity of the body is a powerful
method of criticism that extends beyond the immediate humor discussed in chapter one.
That is, Schlemmers conscious decision to incorporate a discussion on space into his
dances could be seen as a powerful tool that engages dance with a discourse on space and
subjectivity. That is, space could be thought of as a physical structure, but space could also be
thought of as the interaction between bodies and physical structures. Thus, it seems that to
Schlemmer, dance is a powerful medium in which this interaction can be fully explored. Indeed,
Schlemmer states in his essay Theater that The stage is above all an architectonic spatial
organism where all things happening to it and within it exist in a spatially conditioned
relationship.36 The very phrase architectonic spatial organism defines the stage as both
a mechanic and organic space that obeys architectural laws as well as the laws of a natural

36

Oskar Schlemmer, Theater (Bhne), in Theater of the Bauhaus, ed. Walter Gropius and Arthur
Wensinger (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) p. 85

27

organism. Most importantly, though, space determines mans movement, as Schlemmer

describes space as a spatial-linear web which will have a decisive influence on the man who
moves about within itthe human figure becomes a space-bewitched creature, so to speak.37
Schlemmer understands choreography and movement itself as a primarily spatial
idea and activity; what determines movement first and foremost is the human figures
engagement with their external space. Thus, the very origin and motivation for subjects
movements does not seem to come from an internal space of expression but rather the
movements stem from the subjects interaction with the space around them. In a way, this
motivation of movement points to an externalized subjectivity, where circumstance, space, a
logic outside of the human subject seems to play just as much of a role in determining movement
as much as the logic of the human body.
This conceptualization of the human subject as both an internally determined but
also externally determined entity is in no way a simply pessimistic outlook that renders the body
as simply passive to its environment. If anything, this seems to stem from Schlemmers belief in
the power and possibility of the theater in redetermining use and thoughts on space and
mechanization. In Man and the Art Figure, Schlemmer declares:
Utopia? It is indeed astonishing how little has been accomplished so far in
this direction. This materialistic and practical age has in fact lost the genuine
feeling for play and for the miraculous. Amazed at the flood of technological
advance, we accept these wonders of utility as being already perfected art

37

Ibid, p. 92.

28

form, while actually they are only prerequisites for its creation.38
That is, Schlemmers conception of space within his Bauhaus Dances could be seen as an
attempt in his part to approach mechanized space as an aesthetic tool to create new theater
works. Similarly to the De Stijl embrace of the grid as a visual design tool that could be used to
mobilize movement, Schlemmer seems to incorporate the rigidity of the grid in his theater
space in order to mobilize a new kind of movement and theater that could take mechanization
beyond utility and into the realm of creation.
The four types of transformations of the human body that Schlemmer proposes in his
essay Man and the Art Figure are examples of a mobilization of mechanization as a tool for
creation. Looking at these four transformations, one can see the direct correlation between
Schlemmers choreography and his engagement with architecture, industry, and
mechanization. Schlemmer defines the first type, ambulant architecture, as cubical forms
transferred to the human shape: head, torso, arms, legs are transformed into spatial-cubical
constructions.39 This conception of the body literally truncates the body into architectural
forms; at the same time, this truncation provides the basis for a new type of mechanical bodily
movement. All other three types of transformation, technical organism, the marionette, and
dematerialization, point to a certain mechanistic property of the body that is then accentuated. In
a way, this approach in interpreting the material properties through mechanical laws emphasizes

38

39

Oskar Schlemmer, Man and the Art FIgure in Theater of the Bauhaus, ed. Walter Gropius and
Arthur Wensinger (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) p. 31
Ibid, p. 26.

29

the possibility of order that the body holds. And if, as Schlemmer states we need number,
measure, and law as armor and as a weapon,
lest we be swallowed up by chaos, 40 these models of orderly bodily transformations
could be seen as Schlemmers constructive theoretical weapon. These transformations
show us that Schlemmers original conceptions of body and space, which stemmed from the
unity of the mechanical study of architectural space and organic study of the human body, were
models that provided a contemporary and philosophically rich understanding of the body. This
kind of understanding, then, could change the very subjectivity of the viewer by providing a
sense of order and law to the body and space.

40

Oskar Schlemmer, Perspektiven address, quoted in Karin von Maur, The Art of Oskar
Schlemmer, in Oskar Schlemmer, ed. Arnold Lehman and Brenda Richardson, (Baltimore: The
Baltimore Art Museum, 1980) p. 120.

30

Mensch: The Human Figure and Identity

When one looks at Schlemmers syllabus for his Mensch course of 1928, one
sees an artist and a thinker who was seeking to create and preserve an intact human
identity in an increasingly absurd and chaotic world. Walter Benjamin eloquently explains
the collision of modernity and humanity as one of contradiction:
For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than
strategic experience by tactical warfare, economic experience by
inflation, bodily experience by mechanical warfare, moral experience
by those in power. A generation that had gone to school on a horse
drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in
which nothing remained unchanged but the clouds, and beneath
these clouds, in a field of force of destructive torrents and explosions,
was the tiny, fragile, human body. 41
At a time in when the human being and the human body were constantly threatened by
change and destruction, Schlemmers course put forward a method to organize the
human experience in a way contemporary to modern society. Compared to the empathy
and pathos of Benjamins description of the contradiction of experience, Schlemmers
syllabus is bold, ambitious, and ordered:
Mensch/Human : Compulsory for the third semester, 2 weekly period,
21 double periods in all. It is essential for the new life, which
should express itself as a modern feeling about the world and life,
that man should be understood as a cosmic being. His conditions of
existence, his relationships with the natural and artificial environment,
his mechanism and organism, his material, spiritual, and intellectual
image; in short, man as a bodily and spiritual being is a necessary
and important subject of instruction. 42
41

42

Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller, Illuminations, trans Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken
Books, 1968) p. 84.
Oskar Schlemmer, Man: Teaching Notes from the Bauhaus. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972) p. 26.

31

The syllabus was meticulously planned for twenty-one periods, in which he taught
one visual studio class, one biology class, and then one philosophy class. This threeclass cycle was repeated with different content seven times. He gave biology lectures
such as Respiration and Circulation, philosophy lectures such as Materialism,
Realism, and Idealism, and formal visual studios such as Man and Space. 43
Taught in one of Schlemmers last years at the Bauhaus, this syllabus gives a
comprehensive list of subjects that Schlemmer believed were the most essential ways to
understand modern man. The order in which the cycles were repeated: form, biology, and
philosophy suggest how Schlemmer conceived his theories of the human body. His
dedication to the materiality of the body was a reflection of Bauhaus formalism, which
centered around the study of the materiality of a medium before going into theoretical
discussion. For example, when making a wood sculpture, the unique qualities of the wood
would be the basis for the artwork. Schlemmer states that in his form classes, he
wants his students to explore the ways of movement, the choreography of the everyday,
organized movement in gymnastics and dance. 44 The study of the mechanics and
kinetics of movement (or dance) lead to studies of the science of the body as well as the
philosophies of the human body and being. Whether paintings, dances, or writings,
Schlemmers most serious works are based on studies on the unique material quality of

43
44

Ibid, p. 29-30.
Ibid., p 26.

32

the body. However, his ideas theorize this body in ways that go beyond its physical
qualities, incorporating philosophy, biology, and even psychology. Thus, for Schlemmer,
human form is a method for him to get to theorization and philosophy. Rather than being
the means and the end, his artistic and choreographic works could be seen as a means
to communicate his theory or philosophy of the body. Working backward, then, one can
analyze the theories of the body in his class Mensch to ask what meaning they can hold
for us today as contemporary thinkers and artists.
Often Schlemmers work is written off simply as an interesting mechanical dance
experiment; However, to fully understand Schlemmers seemingly blind dedication to
finding order, abstraction, and universal laws in the human body, one must locate his
work within the upheaval, change, and trauma of the Weimar Republic in Germany. That
is, his writing and choreography must be situated and interpreted politically. If, as he
states, we need number, measure, and law as armor and as a weapon, lest we be
swallowed up by chaos 45, he is asserting that his work itself is a weapon against the
crises of modernity, such as displacement, homelessness, rupture, and trauma. When
one looks beyond the organized precision of his public writing (such as Man and the
Art Figure or the Mensch syllabus) and examines his personal journal entries, the

45

Oskar Schlemmer, Perspektiven address, quoted in Karin von Maur.The Art of Oskar
Schlemmer, in Oskar Schlemmer, ed. Arnold Lehman and Brenda Richardson, (Baltimore: The
Baltimore Art Museum, 1980) p. 120.

33

prevalence of his dark humor recording experiences of trauma or displacement cannot be

ignored, especially before and after his years at the Bauhaus. In the periods before he
joined the Bauhaus, he often mentions the shattering of tradition in early modernist art
and intellectual movements; later, he often writes of his growing sense of emotional
displacement within his own country. In the early period, he is at once overwhelmed and
excited by the possibilities of change: all traditions are shattered. The tradition of
Classical Antiquity has been toppled. Artists are surveying the field once you reject
classical painting and art, the sky is the limit. 46 Although one cannot superficially link
his earlier work with his later experience, one can approach his work with a sense of his
disposition towards radical change and displacement. His theories, then, can be read as
artistic and psychological paradigms of subjectivity that helped both himself and others
at an attempt to have a sense of internal cohesion in an externally fractured system.
The question is, then, what kind of strategies did he use to create the paradigms
of subjectivity that he discussed? At one extremely important level, Schlemmer created a
historiography of the body throughout time. I am using the word historiography here
in the way that Keith Jenkins defines history in his book Rethinking History:history/
historiography is an inter-textual, linguistic construct. 47 That is, Schlemmer constructed
a distinct historical narrative of the human body by drawing together previously unrelated

46
47

Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, p. 23.

Keith Jenkins, What History Is, in Re-Thinking History (London: Routledge, 1991), p 5.

34

texts and thinkers. He draws from a wide range of historical artists and writers to base his
course on: Albrecht Durers studies in bodily proportions, Egyptian theories of the body,
as well as Polycles, the Greek thinker who established the canon of the human body,
Leonardo da Vinci, and Fritsch the anatomist. Schlemmer seems to operate in a method
that is the direct opposite method of the Dadaists, who rejected history and theorized that
the future should be opened up in the form of continual breaks rather than by continuity.
In his diary he speaks of the Dadaists: Arp and the others in Zurich-a lot of it seems to
be hollow decoration. 48 What Schlemmer seems most opposed to is art that is simply
reactionary to its environment. Schlemmer was an artist who stated that even taking
one step is a most grave and serious event, 49 or that each small step could hold great
meaning. It seems that the historiography of the body he presented to students was a
way of assigning great historical and philosophical significance to the body. The
significance of the body, however, is not an external knowledge.
He seems to propose that this understanding and study of history is integral to a
formation of identity. When he states in his syllabus that it is essential for the new
life, which should express itself as a modern feeling about the world and life, that man
should be understood as a cosmic being, he emphasizes the personal necessity he
sees in taking this course. Here is the crux of the significance of this course; Schlemmer

48
49

Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, p. 69

Ibid.

35

proposes that a visual, biological, and philosophical study of the human body is
fundamental to the very subjectivity of an individual. That is, the changes in the modern
world are so drastic that a shift in the conceptual understanding of the body is the basis
for a sound, grounded subjectivity.
Schlemmers theories of the body, then, are based on the idea of a body that is
whole within itself. The body conveys cosmic and universal ideas when looked at in
isolation, as long as it remains within the physical laws of the world around it. Rather than
looking at what the body might be in relationship to other bodies, or looking at states of
the body that change and mutate on a day-to-day basis, such as the processes of aging,
dying, or pain, Schlemmer theorizes what I will call a simulacrum of the body. In the
essay Plato and the Simulacrum Deleuze states that in Western culture we have
proceeded, then, from a first determination of the Platonic motive; to distinguish essence
from appearance, the intelligible from the sensible, the Idea from the image, the model
from the simulacrum. 50 He calls for a re-evaluation of the simulacrum and speaks of the
simulacrum in relationship to art.
The simulacrum is constructed around a disparity, a difference; it
interiorizes a dissimilitude. That is why we can no longer even define it
with regard to the model...the simulacrum includes within itself the
differential point of view, and the spectator is made part of the
simulacrum, which is transformed and deformed according to his point

50

Gilles Deleuze. Plato and the Simulacrum trans. Rosalind Krauss. October, Vol. 27. (Winter,
1983), p. 43.

36

of view. In short, folded within the simulacrum there is a process of

going mad, a process of limitlessness. 51
That is, to Deleuze the simulacrum must not be thought of as an inadequate model, but
the very inadequacy and the difference from the model the simulacrum holds must be
thought of as its essential. The fact that it will never be true to the ideal model is not a
fact to mourn, but the very richness that the simulacrum gives the spectator.
This gives us a theoretical basis on which to think of Schlemmers concept of
man, especially in relationship to this course Mensch. Schlemmer in no way attempts to
construct a feasibly whole or definitive understanding of the human psyche, physiology,
or philosophy; his class points to its own inadequacy but in doing so points to the very
richness and endlessness of what it attempts to explain. That is, Schlemmers attempt at
providing a coherent model of human identity, his class Mensch, produces a simulacrum
of human identity. This simulacrum, thus, as Deleuze statesis constructed around a
disparity, a difference; it interiorizes a dissimilitude. 52 The order and sense of history
that Schlemmer constructs is based upon the fact that the order will never be a
representation of reality. His model of human identity is faulty in the sense that it is not
real or even close to being whole, but necessary in the sense that the failed attempt
provides a sense of order that would not exist otherwise.
It is this term, then, that could be best used to describe the whole of Schlemmer

51
52

Ibid, p. 49.
Ibid.

37

s work. The simulacrum points to the rupture, the gap, the irresolvable difference
between reality and the ideal model. However, what the simulacrum does is stubbornly
produce a continuing, spiraling search for, perhaps what Schlemmer would call
number, measure, and law as armor and as a weapon against the otherwise
multiplicitous, chaotic unfolding of events in reality. The very making of a simulacrum,
then, could be seen as an act of resistance against a complicit acceptance reality.
Schlemmers construction of a simulacrum of the human body and human identity was a
weapon against the frustrating and fracturing reality of experience.

38

Bibliography
Bayer, Herbert, Walter Gropius and Ise Gropius . Bauhaus. New York: Museum of
Modern Art, 1938.
Carr, William. The History of Germany: 1815-1945. New York: St. Martins Press, 1979.
Curtis, William. Modern Architecture Since 1900. New York: Phaidon, 1996.
Deleuze, Gilles. Plato and the Simulacrum trans. Rosalind Krauss. October, Vol. 27.
(Winter, 1983), pp. 45-56.
Dodds, George and Tavernor, Robert Ed. Body and building: essays on the changing
relation of body and architecture. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002.
Droste, Magdalena, Bauhaus, New York: Taschen, 2005.
Marcel Duchamp. Salt Seller: The Writings of Marcel Duchamp. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1973.
Fiedler, Jeannine ed. Social Utopias of the Twenties: Bauhaus, Kibbutz and the Dream of
the New Man. Germany: Mller and Busmann Press , 1995.
Foster, Hal, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh.

Art Since 1900:

Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2004.

Frampton, Kenneth. Modern Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson, 2004.
Goldberg, Roselee. Performace Art: from Futurism to the Present. London: Thames and
Hudson, 2001.
Hochman, Elaine. Bauhaus: Crucible of Modernism. New York: Fromm International,
1997. (Avery Bauhaus Section)
Huxley, Michael and Witts, Noel ed. The Twentieth Century Performance Reader. New
York: Routledge, 1996.
Jenkins, Keith. Re-Thinking History. London: Routledge, 1991.
Kisselgoff, Anna. They Created Dance Works at the Bauhaus, too The New York
Times. October 31, 1982.

39

Kniesche, Thomas W, and Brockmann, Stephen ed. Dancing on the Volcano: essays on
the culture of the Weimar Republic. Columbia SC: Camden House, 1994.
Lahusen, Susanne. Oskar Schlemmer: Mechanical Ballets? Dance Research: The
Journal of the Society for Dance Research, Vol. 4, No. 2. (Autumn, 1986), p. 65-77.
Lehman, Arnold and Richardson, Brenda ed. Oskar Schlemmer. Baltimore: The
Baltimore Museum of Art, 1986.
Lodder, Christine, Russian Constructivism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.
Lee, Stephen J. The Weimar Republic. London: Routledge, 1998.
Man and mask: Oskar Schlemmer and the Bauhaus stage / Director: Gottfried Just.
Videocassette. Bavaria Atelier GMBH Production, 1968.
Moholy-Nagy,Laszlo and Schlemmer,Oskar. The Theater of the Bauhaus. Trans.Arthur
Wensinger. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996. (Check out of Barnard
Library)
Moynihan, D.S. Oskar Schlemmers Bauhaus Dances: Debra McCalls
Reconstructions The Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 28, No. 3, Reconstruction. (Autumn,
1984), p. 46-58.
Oskar Schlemmer: Muse Cantini Catalogue. Paris: Muse de Marseille, 1999.
Reynolds, Nancy and McCormick, Malcolm. Dance in the Twentieth Century: No Fixed
Points. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
Schlemmer, Oskar. Man: Teaching Notes from the Bauhaus. Trans. Janet Seligman.
Cambridge: M.I.T Press, 1971.
Schlemmer, Oskar. The Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer. Ed. Tut Schlemmer.
Trans. Krishna Winston. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1972.
Schwarz, Arturo. The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp. New York: Delan Greenidge
Editions, 1997.

40

Sharp, Dennis. Bauhaus, Dessau. London: Phaidon, 1993.

Toepfer, Karl. Empire of Ecstasy: Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 19101935. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Wick, Rainer ed. Teaching at the Bauhaus. Germany: Hatje Cantz. 2000.

41

Illustrations
1) Oskar Schlemmer, Space Dance 1926 (with Werner Seidhoff, Walter Kaminsky)
2) Space Dance Masks
3) Oskar Schlemmer, Figure in a Grid Space 1924
4) Oskar Schlemmer, Four Transformations 1924
5) Oskar Schlemmer, Man in the Realm of Ideas 1928
6) Oskar Schlemmer, Figure Studies 1928

42