triangles, squares and circles

I'm still an 'orange' member of the Barbican and decided to pop along to that Bauhaus exhibition that's running at the moment. Like many, I've owned the tubular steel cantilever chairs and recognise the underlying Bauhaus nature of corporate communication diagrams derived from PowerPoint.

Even my own novels tip a small hat to the Triangle, Square and Circle that riffs through Bauhaus functional modernism. But I found it to be the people behind the original art school movement that really made this exhibition interesting.

Like earlier communities of Frank Lloyd Wright, whose Taliesin West I visited last year, we here see into masked balls, kite building competitions and a general eclecticism somewhat at odds with what became the harshness of glass walled skyscrapers.

A fascinating and surprisingly diverse show, with many of the smaller items holding a real interest and for me a few "Ahah" moments as I spotted items whose origins have now become clearer. Erich Consemüller also photographed some of the original artist/designers, so here's one of Marcel Breuer (he of the boingy chairs) with some of his friends.