ABSTRACT
The construction of the Bauhaus as concept is akin to a palimpsest, having been repeatedly and at times strategically erased and rewritten. On these terms, the Bauhaus can be viewed as a document that reveals both shifting origins and subsequent revisions. In its many iterations, the Bauhaus has been beset by the weight of competing nationalisms, socio-political change, discourses of modernism, and ensuing reactions to them. Its legacy reveals changing attitudes about art-making, pedagogy, production, and authorship. This volume examines how objects produced at the school both reflected and constructed the myriad-and at times conflicting-narratives of the Bauhaus and its discursive practices, in the period of their inception and subsequently in other contexts. In the essays that follow, Bauhaus objects are viewed both as critical repositories that unlock specific pasts in specific moments and as discursively pliable.
