The Bauhaus Pots and Cups Express the Spirit of the Twentieth Century: Design in Art History and Pevsner's Definition of the Modern Movement

Abstract

Nikolaus Pevsner’s Pioneers of Modern Movement is considered the foundational text of two new historical fields, the history of modern architecture and the history of design. This contribution, nevertheless, discusses this text in the context of art-historical discipline. Pevsner himself namely understood his work as a complement to Kunstgeschichte: by defining the ‘Modern Movement’ in established art-historical terms and also by discussing not only architecture but attempting to define the style and the worldview expressed in it for the whole period and all of visual arts. Specifically, this contribution is interested in the place that Pevsner allocated to the design within his art-historical edifice, since inclusion of objects of everyday use within an art-historical study was not (and still is not) usual. For Pevsner, on the contrary, design (linked to architecture) turns out to be a key component of his narrative, even if not for aesthetic but rather for moral or social reasons.