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Home , Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo, Arts and Crafts movement

video production, dance, music, scent The Possible: design, artists’ correspondence, , A Thread of instruction, song-writing, poetry, book- making, , drawing, printmaking, Change felting, games, yoga, lectures, meditation, hiking, bathing, fashion, collage, kite-making, Lawrence Rinder cooking, and display. The designers of the exhibition’s furnishings, the craft specialists who facilitated the various workshops, and the guest artists were all given equal weight, so that the exhibition offered a creative environment without hierarchy among design, craft, and art. More than one hundred people, children as well as adults, participated as core creators, deepening existing collaborative relation- ships and creating new ones across many disciplines. The exhibition had no clear 27 beginning or end: it evolved over two and a half years of preparation through a series of correspondence projects and gatherings that took place across the country. Even after the galleries opened to the public the exhibition continued to evolve: new artists were welcomed, and surprising objects appeared in the galleries. Visitors’ experiences of the show were never the same twice. David Wilson, the curator of The Possible, The Possible grew out of Wilson’s prior is an artist. He brought an artist’s sensibility to work creating site-specific installations the exhibition, creating an open-ended, and festivals; however, whereas these earlier nondidactic framework for the generation of projects usually took place in and responded creativity, collaboration, and community. to natural settings (for example, Angel The Possible encompassed design, Island, Wildcat Canyon, and Rodeo Beach), mail art, historical archives, video, ceramics, The Possible was set in the dramatic BAM/ textile dyeing, weaving, sound recording, PFA building, a 1960s Brutalist structure

fig.1 designed by Mario Ciampi. Wilson took with the museum’s role as a cultural Mountain — Anni Albers, Josef Albers, John full advantage of the building’s unique bellwether, The Possible represented a Cage, Anna Halprin, Sheila Hicks — as physical and sonic . He set up a dynamic and influential dimension of inspirations. Whether they are conscious recording studio to allow artists to capture contemporary creative practice; however, it of it or not, the cultural ethos of the Arts and its resonant acoustics, hung textiles made in was less a summation than a provocation. Crafts Movement remains a powerful the fabric workshop from the overhanging The Possible asked not only its audiences force among artists, designers, and crafts balconies, and engaged the rarely used but also its enactors and its hosts — the BAM/ makers in the Bay Area and also in pockets outdoor terraces — even the generally PFA staff — to imagine things to be different throughout the United States. In addition, neglected garden became the setting for an than they are. It was more carnivalesque a number of specific legacies connect artists outdoor shower for the workshops devoted than utopian insofar as it offered no ideology of The Possible to teachers — especially to physical activities. Fritz Haeg’s Domestic of change and no program for social better- at the California College of the Arts — whose Integrities rug acted as an enormous colorful ment other than the proposition that own work and ideology was formed by punctum at the center of the vast concrete collaboration can be both productive and fun. contact with those who studied or taught at atrium. The Possible also delved into Explicit politics were notably absent from Black Mountain College or the . BAM/PFA’s institutional history, presenting The Possible; however, the very breakdown Among the principles linking The Possible to in its “library” materials gleaned from the of conventions and opportunities for these antecedents are the breakdown of the archives, such as correspondence and other engagement provided by the exhibition hierarchies among , craft, and design; documentation related to past exhibitions, can be seen as object lessons in a creative support of experimentation; interest in global as well as videos of historical performances. cultural currents; emphasis on group activity Besides echoing Wilson’s own prior site- and collaboration; holistic approaches to specific work, his comprehensive approach creativity encompassing the body, health, to The Possible — incorporating the museum’s reimagining and remaking of our collective and well-being; an embrace of play; and the architecture as a key element — paid homage social experience. Wilson is more a convener aspiration to evolve a , or to the site and its history at a particular mo- than a polemicist and his practice embraces “total work of art.” The development of these ment in BAM/PFA’s history, just prior to a radical diversity of methods and points earlier movements and institutions, which the building’s closure the institution’s move of view. evolved one into the other, serves as to a new facility. If The Possible was nearly sui generis an illuminating background for Wilson’s The Possible was an exhibition, but it as an exhibition, its form and spirit resonated The Possible. could easily have been called something else: with a number of historical cultural move- the emerged a school, a festival, a happening, a movement, ments and institutions, most notably the Arts in Great Britain in the mid-nineteenth a total work of art. Its principles and methods and Crafts Movement, the Bauhaus, and century and spread throughout the world, were antithetical to normal museum practice: Black Mountain College. It is unclear how becoming particularly influential in California the precise contents of the exhibition were many of the practitioners involved in The in the early decades of the twentieth century. never known, most works of art were not Possible saw themselves as working in these The movement’s initial impetus was social physically secured, and determinations traditions, although many named figures and political, a reaction to the negative of quality were left open-ended. In keeping associated with the Bauhaus or Black impact of rapid industrialization on living and

fig.2 fig.3 could solve the core problem of modern While Shaw celebrated the overturning society; that is, in the words of Thomas of the hierarchical dominance of painting, Carlyle, “men are grown mechanical in head Morris himself took the matter one step and heart, as well as in hand.” 1 Admittedly, for further by setting up an actual loom in the some the problem was more aesthetic than Society’s 1889 exhibition and personally revolutionary. George Bernard Shaw, for demonstrating the craft of tapestry weaving. example, in reviewing the first exhibition of The rapprochement between art and craft the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society had many fascinating outcomes including working conditions. , the ironically, in this return to the past was in 1888 wrote, “It has been for a long time the first magazine designed also to be a work movement’s chief progenitor, was as much a embedded some of the principles that past evident that the first step towards of art, ’s The political theorist and organizer as he was would become the seeds of the Modernist making our picture galleries endurable is to Hobby Horse (1882) (an early precedent for a craftsman, poet, and businessman. Morris’s revolution: wholesale social reinvention, get rid of the pictures… signboards all of this very publication), and Morris’s own home, solution to the dehumanizing effects of striving for truth to materials and structural them of the wasted and perverted ambition The Red House (1860), which he designed modern industry was to return to the hand- honesty, the evolution of form from function, of men who might have been passably useful with as a gesamtkunstwerk made, skill-based, communally defined and the elevation of the everyday as a as architects, engineers, potters, cabinet incorporating painting, textiles, furniture, practices of the medieval guilds. Utopian matter of artistic concern. makers, smiths, or bookbinders.”2 and by Edward Burne-Jones, and ultimately impractical on a large scale, the Arts and Crafts Movement was Christina Rossetti, and William and ’s experiment led to a resurgence not a style and did not result in a common Morris, among others. of interest in nearly forgotten antique crafts visual vocabulary; rather, it was based on 1 . Thomas Carlyle, quoted in Rosalind P. Blakesley, the most significant problem facing as well as in the traditional roots of a variety shared principles, most importantly the idea The Arts and Crafts Movement (London: Phaidon Press the Arts and Crafts Movement was the of cultural practices, from music and that the reintegration of art and craft — Limited, 2006), 12. contradiction between its Socialist aims and dance to architecture and agriculture. both with each other and with life itself — 2 . George Bernard Shaw, quoted in Blakesley, 62.

fig.4 fig.5 Marcks, Oskar Schlemmer, and Lyonel regardless of their ultimate métier, em- Feininger who celebrated the individual phasized direct experience of materials and creative vision of the students, employed processes over reference to past styles

free-spirited — even at times Dadaistic and approaches: experimentation was —pedagogical approaches, and based their the essence of the Bauhaus. From the very work on metaphysical as well as social beginning, the Bauhaus borrowed and artistic principles. the Arts and Crafts Movement’s principle Philip Oswalt, the current director that all of the arts and crafts should ultimately of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, observes, synthesize into a single expression, a “Bauhaus = maximum concentration and gesamtkunstwerk. “The ultimate aim interaction of previously isolated phenomena; of all creative activity is the building,” wrote the interplay of art, science, and technology; Walter Gropius in the Program of the the blending of research, teaching, and Bauhaus. Therefore, architecture played an practical application; a gathering of cultural increasingly important role in the school’s influences from widely differing countries. curriculum. the economic implications of its focus on Germany’s broad economic aims: the The Bauhaus was a radical experiment Before the Bauhaus’ sharp turn handcraft and highly skilled production; in joining of art, craft, and manufacturing into a in the breaking down of boundaries, in de- in 1922 towards standardization and mass short, the movement which had intended dynamic relationship of innovation, utility, categorization, and in consolidation. production, the school was more like a to uplift the masses in truth produced and aesthetic refinement. In 1905 Van de No metaphor describes it more aptly than progressive art college of today than the exquisite finery for a wealthy few. Certain Veldeestablished a school in , where that of space in flux—in an intellectual sense protoindustrial think tank its founders voices within the movement, notably he put these principles into practice. It is as well . . . Experiments were not an end had envisioned. Indeed much of our current the architect , had been less this school that, in 1919, under the leadership in themselves but served instead to promote model for art education stems from averse to mass production, which would of architect Walter Gropius but retaining the emancipation of human beings, the quest the Bauhaus’s core pedagogical ideas. have made the objects produced by Arts much of Van de Velde’s conceptual founda- for approaches to a better present.”3 Yet, under the leadership of Itten, the and Crafts artists more affordable, but tion, became the Bauhaus. the Bauhaus was organized around a Bauhaus’s approach was even more radical in , at least, Morris’s insistence on over time, the Bauhaus has become number of discipline-based workshops than most curricula today. As a follower won out. Meanwhile, in Germany a somewhat negative cliché of , (in pottery, textiles, printmaking, etc.) each of Mazdaznan, and influenced as well by in the first decade of the twentieth century, standing for doctrinaire simplicity and of which was led by a team that included a Theosophy and Anthroposophy—all turn- politicians and capitalists were seeking utilitarianism. This image is only partly justifi- master craftsman and an artist. These of-the-century spiritual movements that had to reinvigorate their national industries. A ed; in fact, the Bauhaus had a number of quite workshops, as well as the distinctive and a profound impact on the development key figure in these efforts was the Belgian distinct incarnations and embraced a host seminal preliminary course developed of twentieth-century art and music — Itten’s painter, furniture designer, and architect of divergent and even conflicting aesthetics by Itten, which was required of all students classes extended to instruction in breathing , who had been and methodologies. In its early years, techniques, yoga, chanting, nutrition, and sexuality. For Itten, the ideal gesamtkunstwerk powerfully influenced by the English Arts between 1919 and 1922, before its move 3. Philipp Oswalt, “The Bauhaus Today,” in was less a physical building than a spiritual and Crafts Movement and who arrived to Dessau, the Bauhaus was led by a team, Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model (Ostfildern: Hatje at an approach that he felt could accomplish including Johannes Itten, Paul Klee, Gerhard Cantz, 2009), 364 one, as symbolized in his Tower of Fire

fig.6 39 (1920), a double helix construction in steel which existed from 1933 to 1956, was and stained glass. Oskar Schlemmer, also the most pioneering and influential across a follower of Mazdaznan, was in charge of diverse disciplines. the Bauhaus’s frequent “festivities,” which Black Mountain was founded by a were essentially bacchanalian theme parties scholar of classical philosophy, John Andrew (e.g. The Lantern Parade, The Kite Festival), Rice, who hoped to develop an art-centered attended by the students, faculty, staff, liberal arts curriculum based on the Socratic and neighbors of the school. According to method. A close associate of John Dewey, scholar Mercedes Valdivieso, the Bauhaus he believed in the central importance of festivities “had a distinctly pedagogical aim: experience and experimentation over rote they fostered collective work and solidified a learning and reliance on historical precedent. sense of community, at the same time serving Josef Albers, whom Rice invited to be as a kind of venting mechanism or mode one of the first faculty members at Black of catharsis. . . . An additional pedagogical Mountain, stated that his goal would be “to aim of the festivities was the development of open eyes.”5 Albers, whose own work and the ‘play instinct.’”4 teaching embodied a rational and systematic Although the Bauhaus lost much approach to color and design, welcomed of its playful spirit after 1922, it remained a tremendously diverse range of approaches irreverent enough to gain the enmity of the to the school. What he fostered was not increasingly powerful National Socialist party. a consistent style but a shared exploration In 1933 the Nazis closed the Bauhaus and into the fundamental nature of materials, an many of the instructors and students fled to embrace of process and possibility, and a the United States. Here, many aspects sense of community and collaboration. One of the Bauhaus were reborn at institutions of several key characteristics that the artists across the country including the Harvard of Black Mountain shared with both the Arts School of Design (Gropius, Marcel Breuer), and Crafts Movement and the Bauhaus the Armour Institute (now Illinois Institute was an interest in creating a synthesis of the of Technology, Mies van der Rohe) and arts that would be greater than the sum of New Bauhaus (Laszló Moholy-Nagy) its parts. The Black Mountain community was in Chicago; California College of Arts and familiar with the notion of the performance Crafts (Trude Guermonprez) and Pond Farm Workshop (Marguerite Wildenhain) in 4. the San Francisco Bay Area; and Black Mercedes Valdivieso, “Bauhaus Festivities in Dessau,” in Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model, 231. Mountain College (Josef and Anni Albers, 5. Josef Albers, quoted in Black Mountain College: Feininger, Xanti Schawinsky) in North An Experiment in Art, ed. Vincent Katz Carolina. Of these, Black Mountain College, (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2002), 32.

fig.7 41 as gesamtkunstwerk (which is how Richard seems to have involved a movie, a slide show, properties in the mise-en-scène of fig.1 : Cover of The Century Wagner used the term in his essays “Art and lectures (delivered from atop ladders) the exhibition, in the presentation of Guild Hobby Horse no. 1 (April 1884); and Revolution” and “The Artwork of by Cage, M.C. Richards, and Charles performances and in sound recordings. courtesy William Morris Gallery, London Borough of Waltham Forest. the Future,” both published in 1849) through Olsen; Robert Rauschenberg DJing Edith At the same time, The Possible was a four- their work with former Bauhaus student Piaf records (with some of his paintings month-long happening, incorporating many fig.2 Edward Burne-Jones: William Morris and instructor Alexander “Xanti” Schawinsky. suspended overhead); David Tudor playing of the generative properties of Cage’s Giving a Weaving Demonstration, 1888; pencil Schawinsky was noted for his innovative a piano; and Merce Cunningham and seminal piece Theater Piece No. 1, such as on paper; 9 x 7 in.; courtesy William Morris “colored light plays.” The real breakthrough, others dancing. engaging multiple disciplines that do Gallery, London Borough of Waltham Forest. however, came with the arrival of John Cage. “Changefulness,” a potent and poetic not normally overlap, withholding from fig.3 Johannes Itten: Tower of Fire, 1920; Cage first came to Black Mountain term that appears at the dawn of the the audience a point of focus, and allowing wood, pewter, lead glass, and other materials. with his partner Merce Cunningham in Arts and Crafts Movement, in ’s collaborators creative liberty within a Reconstruction by Michael Siebenbrodt, 1948 as a performer and returned several essay “The Nature of Gothic” (1853), rearranged score or framework. Glas-Kraus Company, Weimar, and Rainer Zöll- times to collaborate with the students and characterizes each of these moments Ciampi’s building is very much of its ner, 1995–96; 13 1/4 ft. x 52 1/2 in. x 52 1/2 in. faculty, including Buckminster Fuller, Willem in the journey to The Possible. An essential time — the mid to late 1960s — and seems to Photo: Hartwig Klappert, courtesy Klassik de Kooning, Elaine de Kooning, and Robert optimism underlies the willingness to change, have been designed for an exhibition like Stiftung Weimar. Rauschenberg. During his visit in the summer which courses through this century and The Possible. Its open spaces encourage fig.4 Johannes Itten: Class with Gunta Stölzl of 1952, Cage—who had recently arrived a half of experiments in art and living. The the interpenetration of sight and sound, the standing in the middle with her right arm raised, at his revolutionary use of chance operations Possible’s other resonances with the Arts and large central atrium facilitates gathering c. 1921; courtesy Gunta Stölzl Foundation. as a compositional technique—composed Crafts Movement, the Bauhaus, and Black and performance, and the upward spiral of not only his now legendary 4’33” but also Mountain College are deep and varied: the galleries speaks of an aspiration to fig.5 Lyonel Feininger: Postcard for lantern Theater Piece No. 1, now considered by a redefinition of the relationships among art, unknown possibilities. Yet, in contrast to festival, 1922; lithograph; 3 3/4 x 5 1/2 in.; courtesy Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin. many to be the first “happening.” Cage craft, and design; the extension of artistry to the future-oriented vision of the exhibition’s © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / was inspired, in part, by M.C. Richard’s previously un-artistic dimensions of life; and antecedents, The Possible marked a VG Bild-Kunst-Bonn. recent translation of Antonin Artuad’s The an exploration of the creative opportunities termination. The Ciampi building is being Theater and it’s Double: “we got the idea of collaboration and community. As a gesamt- abandoned due to seismic issues, making fig.6 Kite Festival in Weimar, September 25, from Artaud that theater could take place kunstwerk, The Possible synthesized the total this exhibition one of its last. In a sense, 1921; courtesy Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin. free of a text, that if a text were in it, that it artwork as both building and performance. Wilson and his collaborators have looked fig.7 Buckminster Fuller: Students needn’t determine the other actions, that Wilson’s exhibition consciously utilized towards a past that has not yet come, the and faculty hanging from geodesic dome, 1949. sounds, that activities, and so forth, could all Mario Ciampi’s distinctive museum design, moment when Ciampi’s visionary structure Photo: Masato Nagakawa, courtesy Black be free rather than tied together… so that the exploiting its large central atrium as a will no longer exist in its current state, if at all. Mountain College Project; Western Regional audience was not focused in one particular space for creative production and its upper Like Ruskin and Morris who looked to the Archives, State Archives of North Carolina. direction.”6 In part due to its intentional lack galleries for a library, display space, and Gothic cathedral and guild for inspiration, of focus, there is little consensus about what space for experimentation in video and Wilson and his team have learned from actually transpired in the event. However, it sound (under the auspices of the collective Ciampi’s building and the “changeful” spirit The Something). The building was embraced of the time in which it was made.

6. for its unique acoustic, spatial, and visual John Cage, quoted in Katz, 138.

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