How interesting to have the Bauhaus exhibition in the same building as Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach.
The utopianism of the earlier artists is missing from Wilson’s work*, where the residue is the rhythmic beauty of mathematics, music and architecture that was, in a different form, part of their vision. The vibration of cells and the patternings of sound make a mockery of judgement, then suddenly, the atomic bomb. The dancers are bewildered, retreating into a clumsy narrative of love.
I am too interested in individual faces to be truly on Wilson’s wavelength, but I could have watched endlessly those dancers who blew across the stage like ice in sunlight.
Two ends of the twentieth century, both profound responses to the changes that took, and are still taking place.
* Some weeks later, this statement needs more precise investigation. What is it to be utopian anyway? Have a look at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Centre, for instance. And he interned with fascinating architect Paolo Soleri who’s work is explicitly anti-utopian, but can also be described as utopian, depending on what you mean.