ABSTRACT
Gropius founded the Bauhaus with a double evocation: an evocation at once of Bayreuth and the Crystal Palace. Accompanied by Lyonel Feininger’s woodcut of a crystalline cathedral, Gropius’ 1919 manifesto exhorted fellow artists to create a crystalline Gesamtkunstwerk, a grand union of art and technology that would restore the splintered whole of society. The vision was at once deeply indebted to German neo-Romanticism and openly celebratory of the revolutionary potential of industrialization. From the Festspielhaus, Gropius took a vision of a society redeemed by total art; from the Great Exhibitions, Gropius took an embrace of industrialization and an almost religious enthusiasm for the possibilities of mass production and mass man.
