“The Bauhaus concept, as it was transplanted to the United States, was fundamentally different from the principles upon which the experimental school had been founded in Weimar in 1919. The guiding principle of the Bauhaus was to unify all aspects of art making—painting, sculpture, handicrafts—as elements of a new kind of art, erasing the division between “high” and decorative art. Explorations of materials, color, and form were important building blocks of the curriculum. The artists and designers of the Bauhaus believed that this new type of art and design would help to create a better society, and they sought commissions to design public buildings and other elements of public life (such as flags and currency). In America, however, the Bauhaus ideas lost their social and political thrust. The emigré teachers in Chicago, Cambridge, and North Carolina who had been committed to progressive architecture and design ideas in Germany were now lionized as upholders of a pure, reductivist style.”
(Stephanie Barron, page 25)