Bauhas & Avant Garde Inspiration | Art Beyond Art

Das Triadische Ballet | Oskar Schlemmer

The premier of this ballet happened on 30 September 1922. It quickly gained popularity and became the most widely performed avant-garde artistic dance.

Schlemmer viewed the movement of puppets and marionettes as "aesthetically superior to that of humans, as it emphasised that the medium of every art is artificial."

As scholar and contemporary artist Rasheed Araeen states "Art must now go beyond the making of mere objects that are displayable in the museum or/and sold as precious commodities at the market place. Only then it can enter the world of everyday life and its collective energy that is struggling not only to improve life itself but to save it from its impending destruction on earth."

I am currently struggling to find ways in which my art is meaningful beyond being displayed in a gallery and giving me personal satisfaction. Right now my art may be called selfish. How do we as artists steer away from this and the "bourgeois art institutions?"

Olinde Rodrigues in his essay "L'artiste, le savent et l'industrial" answers this by saying "the power of the arts is indeed the most immediate and fastest way" to social, political, and economic reform.

Perhaps we all need to think about art beyond art, art beyond materials and commodities. Perhaps we should more wholeheartedly embrace the ideas of the avant garde and Schelemmer in more thoroughly connecting art with life and using our expressive potential in more than a passively collaboratory way.