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Pestalozzi in Dewey’s Realm? Bauhaus Master Josef Albers among the German‐ speaking Emigrés’ Colony at Black Mountain College (1933–1949)

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 42; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00309230600552013

1477-674X

Karl‐Heinz Füssl,

Visual Culture and Art Theory

Abstract This article deals with German academic émigrés who fled Hitler after 1933 and established their refuge at the American‐based Black Mountain College in North Carolina, founded as an alternative to traditional institutions of higher education in that very year. Of particular consideration are the contributions of noted Bauhaus master Josef Albers who introduced a new concept of art education in a school environment, theoretically dominated by John Dewey's paradigm of philosophical pragmatism and converted into practice by his fervent admirer John A. Rice. In the course of the study, the essay focuses on fertilizing elements regarding the interaction between European and American avant‐garde representatives in the arts. In its concluding remarks, the article traces the roots of Josef Albers's art education and pedagogical creed. The essay finally discusses the question of whether Albers was a close follower of the late Pestalozzi's educational convictions or rather was linked to John Dewey's philosophical system as maintained in the existing scholarly literature. Notes 1 Krohn, Claus‐Dieter. Wissenschaft im Exil: Deutsche Sozial‐ und Wirtschaftswissenschaftler in den USA und die New School for Social Research. Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus, 1987; Pioneer's Progress: An Autobiography by Alvin Johnson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1960; Speier, Hans and Alfred Kähler, eds. War in Our Time. By the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research with a Foreword by Alvin Johnson. New York: W. W. Norton, 1939; Zambelli, Paola. "Refugee Philosophers. An Emigré's Career: Koyré at the New School for Social Research." In The 'Unacceptables': American Foundations and Refugee Scholars Between the Two Wars and After, edited by Giuliana Gemelli. Brussels, etc.: Peter Lang, 2000: 141–72. 2 I Remember: The Autobiography of Abraham Flexner. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1940; Oppenheimer, Robert. The Institute for Advanced Study: Publications of Members, 1930–1954. Princeton, NJ: Institute for Advanced Studies, 1955. 3 International Institute of Social Research. A Report on its History, Aims and Activities, 1933–1938. New York: International Institute of Social Research, 1938; Stuart Hughes, Henry. The Sea Change: The Migration of Social Thought, 1930–1965. New York: McGraw Hill, 1977; Fermi, Laura. Illustrious Immigrants: The Intellectual Migration from Europe, 1930–1941. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968. 4 Hirsch, Helmut. Onkel Sams Hütte. Autobiographisches Garn eines Asylanten in den USA. Leipzig: Universitätsverlag, 1994; Weil, Rolf A. Through These Portals: From Immigrant to University President. Chicago: Roosevelt University Press, 1991; Probst Gerhard E. "Hochschulen als Wirkungsstätten von Exilanten." In Deutschsprachige Exilliteratur seit 1933. Bd. II: New York. Edited by John M. Spalek and Joseph Strelka. Bern: Francke Verlag, 1989: 1446–69. 5 Adamic, Louis. "Education on a Mountain." Harper's Magazine 172 (April 1936): 516–30; Carter, Sydney H. "Black Mountain College." In Bower, Warren. The College Writer: An Anthology of Student Pros. Edited for College Composition Classes. New York: W. W. Norton, 1935: 71–86. 6 Duberman, Martin. Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1988 (first published by E. P. Dutton. New York, 1972); Harris, Mary Emma. The Arts at Black Mountain College. Cambridge, MA–London: MIT Press, 1978; The Black Mountain Book: A New Edition, Revised & Enlarged, with Illustrations by Fielding Dawson. Rocky Mount, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991; Lane, Mervin. Black Mountain College. Sprouted Seeds: An Anthology of Personal Accounts. Knoxville, TX: The University of Texas Press, 1990. 7 After Black Mountain College closed in 1956 all archival papers including office files, letters, student examinations and judgements, search committee works, pictures etc. were collected in the North Carolina State Archive, Raleigh, NC, Black Mountain College Collection (in the following abbreviated as BMC). In later years the state of North Carolina established a permanent research project, which worked on the task to systematize the bulk of archival materials, to generate indexes and an inventory, and to assist and advise on scholarly research. The research project also focused on numerous interviews conducted with former faculty members, visitors and students. BMC Research Project, Box 1, Refugees – Inventory until December 18, 1940. 8 Cremin, Lawrence A. The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957. New York: Knopf–Random House, 1961; Lucas, Christopher J. American Higher Education: A History. New York: St Martin's Press, 1994; Rudolph, Frederick. The American College and University: A History. Introductory Essay and Supplemental Bibliography by John R. Thelin. Athens, GA–London: University of Georgia Press, 1962, 1990. 9 Bower. The College Writer; Cremin. The Transformation of the School; Albjerg Graham, Patricia. Progressive Education. From Arcady to Academe: A History of the Progressive Education Association, 1919–1955. New York: Columbia University Teachers College Press, 1967. 10 John Dewey was the founder of AAUP. Hook, Sidney. John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait. Introduction by Richard Rorty. New York: Prometheus Books, 1995. 11 Rice, John A. "Grandmother Smith's Plantation." Harper's Magazine (November 1938): 572–82. See also his award‐winning autobiography: I Came Out of the Eighteenth Century. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942; Reynolds, Katherine C. Visions and Vanities: John Andrew Rice of Black Mountain College. Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press, 1998. 12 Letter John Dewey to Black Mountain College, 18 July 1940; reprinted in BMC, Box 4: BMC Newsletter Number 9 (August 1940). 14 Ibid., 590f. 13 Rice, John A. "Fundamentalism and the Higher Learning." Harper's Magazine (May 1937): 587–96. 15 Loc. cit. 16 John A. Rice. BMC Memoirs. In Lane, Black Mountain College, 10–23. 17 BMC, Box 29: You Are the Curriculum You Make. In Raleigh, NC: The News and Observer (3 October 1937). 18 Wick, Rainer K. Teaching at the Bauhaus. With a Text by Gabriele Diana Grawe. Ostfildern‐Ruit: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2000. 19 Wolsdorff, Christian. "Josef Albers' Vorkurs am Bauhaus 1923–1933." In Josef Albers. Eine Retrospektive. Stationen der Ausstellung Salomon. R. Guggenheim Museum New York etc. Köln: DuMont, 1988: 49–60; Fox Weber, Nicholas. "Der Künstler als Alchimist." Ibid., 14–48. 20 After his arrival at BMC Josef Albers told John A. Rice this episode; John A. Rice: BMC‐Memoirs. In Lane, Black Mountain College: 10–23; Yale University Library, Manuscripts and Archives: Josef Albers Collection, Group Nr 32, Box 1 (in the following abbreviated JA): Letter Theodore Dreier, Black Mountain College, USA, to Josef Albers, Berlin, Germany, undated (1933). Dreier offered US$1000 for moving to North Carolina and shipping passage across the Atlantic. 21 Josef Albers: Eine Retrospektive; interview with Philip Johnson, in (the German weekly) Die Zeit 29 (11 July 2002). 22 BMC, Series III, 4: M. Duberman Collection, BMC Interviews: Interview with Josef and Anni Albers, 11 November 1967. 23 JA (Yale University), Box 1: Letter from Wassily Kandinsky, Neuilly s/Seine, France, to Josef Albers, Black Mountain College, USA, 15 March 1935. 24 Search Vs. Re‐Search: Three Lectures by Josef Albers at Trinity College, April 1965. Hartford, CT: Trinity College Press, 1969. 25 Albers, Josef. "A Note on the Arts in Education." American Magazine of Art 29 (April 1936): 233. 26 Id. "Art as Experience." Progressive Education 12 (October 1935): 39. The editors excused in a short note the clumsy written English. They would not change the style because of the powerfully presented argumentation. 27 BMC: Research Project, Box 9 (the author of this student record could not be identified: Ruth V…?) Note on J. Albers (Student recorded courses with Albers) [1946]. 28 Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind. New York etc.: Simon & Schuster, 1987. 29 Especially noteworthy is the art journal Black Mountain Review initiated by students William Carlos Williams, Paul Ellsworth, Nicola Cernovich, Edward Dorn, Joel Oppenheimer and Jonathan Williams. The second edition of its predecessor The Jargon Idea was illustrated by Robert Rauschenberg (The Dancer). Allen Ginsburg published besides others the essay America, Jack Kerouac published From October in the Railroad Earth. Black Mountain Review was published until 1957. See Bell, Millicent. The Jargon Idea. Repr. from Books at Brown XIX (May 1963); Allen, Donald M., ed. The New American Poetry. Berkeley–Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999. 30 Rauschenberg, Robert. The Early 1950's. An Exhibition Organized by the Menil Collection. Washington, DC: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1991. Rauschenberg's first work of 1949 This is the First Half of a Print Designed to Exist in Passing Times was followed by the blue print series Interior of an Old Carriage, Untitled and Ceiling and Light Bulb. In his early working period, Rauschenberg was closely connected with Jasper Jones. Rauschenberg was awarded the main painting prize at the Biennale in Venice, Italy, in 1964. Robert Rauschenberg, edited by Armin Zweite. Cologne: DuMont, 1994. 31 Rice in Melvin Lane; Duberman. 32 Better known under the term Servicemen's Readjustment Act from June 1944. See e.g. Ravitch, Diane. The Troubled Crusade: American Education 1945–1980. New York: Basic Books, 1983. 33 Bentley, Eric. "Report from the Academy: The Experimental College." Originally published in Partisan Review XII (1945) and reprinted in Lane, Black Mountain College. Bentley classified Albers as a "passionate evangel". 34 Duberman, Black Mountain; Lane Black Mountain College; Adamic, Education on a Mountain. 35 Bestor, Arthur. Educational Wastelands. Urbana: University of Illionois Press, 1953; Hutchins, Robert, M. The Conflict in Education in a Democratic Society. New York: Harper & Brother, 1953; Tyack, David, and Larry Cuban. Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. For a more general overview of mutual influences on education see Füssl, Karl‐Heinz. Deutsch–amerikanischer Kulturaustausch im 20. Jahrhundert. Bildung–Wissenschaft–Politik. Frankfurt am Main–New York: Campus, 2004. 36 Bernstein, Basil. Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 3. London: Routledge, 1977; id. The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse, Vol. 4 of Class, Codes and Control. London: Routledge, 1990. 37 See also the Interview with Josef Albers. In Kuh, Katharine. The Artist's Voice: Talks With Seventeen Modern Artists. New York: Harper & Row, 1962. 38 Grawe, Gabriele Diana. "Continuity and Transformation: Bauhaus Pedagogy in North America." In Wick, Teaching at the Bauhaus, 338–65; Mary Emma Harris in her article "Josef Albers. Kunsterziehung am Black Mountain College", in Josef Albers: Eine Retrospektive, 61–67 classifies Albers as a follower of John Dewey's philosophical pragmatism as well as the 'Gestalt' theorists. 39 Reprinted interviews with Josef and Anni Albers from the year 1965. Lane,. Black Mountain College, 33–40 and 41–43; BMC, Series III, 4: M. Duberman Collection: BMC Interviews, Interview with Josef and Anni Albers, 11 November 1967. 40 JA (Yale University), Box 2: Yale University; Faculty Questionnaire, 12 November 1953: Curriculum vitae Josef Albers. 41 Ibid. Josef Albers. "Aus meiner Erinnerung an mein Lehrer‐Jahr in der Bauerschaftsschule Weddern bei Dülmen." Ms. 31 May 1959. 42 Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich. Wie Gertrud ihre Kinder lehrt, ein Versuch den Müttern eine Anleitung zu geben, ihre Kinder selbst zu unterrichten (1801). In Pestalozzi. Sämtliche Werke, 13. Band: Schriften aus der Zeit von 1799–1801, bearbeitet von Herbert Schönebaum und Kurt Schreinert. Berlin–Leipzig: Verlag von Walter de Gruyter, 1932: 183. Translated from the German by the author. 43 Ibid., 190f; 194ff; 203f; 209ff, 229; 235 44 Die Brandenburgischen Lehrerseminare und die ihnen angegliederten Präparandenanstalten: Einzeldarstellung ihrer Entwicklung, im Auftrag einer Arbeitsgemeinschaft, edited by Friedrich von Buchholz and Gerhard Buchwald. Berlin: Hauptstelle für Erziehungs‐ und Schulwesen, 1961; Titze, Hartmut. "Lehrerbildung und Professionalisierung." In Handbuch der deutschen Bildungsgeschichte, Vol. IV: 1870–1918. Von der Reichsgründung bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges, edited by Christa Berg. München: C. H. Beck Verlag, 1991: 345–70. 45 Oelkers, Jürgen, and Fritz Osterwalder. Pestalozzi – Umfeld und Rezeption: Studien zur Historisierung einer Legende. Weinheim–Basel: Beltz Verlag, 1995; Osterwalder, Fritz. "Pestalozzi – ein pädagogischer Kult:" Pestalozzis Wirkungsgeschichte in der Herausbildung der modernen Pädagogik. Weinheim–Basel: Beltz‐Verlag, 1995 46 JA (Yale University), Box 1: Merits, Credentials and Awards of Josef Albers (1888–1976).