3p, mimeograph on matte off white paper
BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE COMMUNITY BULLETIN
College Year 11 Summer Bulletin 9
Monday, August 28, 1944
CALENDAR:
This evening at 8:15 o’clock in the College Dining Hall Walter Gropius will give his second slide-illustrated lecture in the series on “Site and Shelter After the War.”
The Board of Fellows will hold its August business meeting in Study 10 on Tuesday afternoon at 3:30 o’clock.
On Wednesday evening at 8:15 o’clock in the College Dining Hall Jean Charlot will give his fourth slide-illustrated lecture. It will be on “Abstract Art and Josef Albers.”
There will be a meeting of the Faculty in the Round House on Thursday evening from 7:15 to 8:10 o’clock to discuss the trial examination papers of two students.
On Thursday evening at 8:15 o’clock JB Neumann will give his second slide-illustrated lecture in the College Dining Hall. It will be on the subject “From Rembrandt to Klee.”
The Ninth Concert will be a program of Choral Music conducted by Heinrich Jalowetz and Edward Lowinsky. It will begin on Saturday evening, September 2, at 8:15 PM.
NEWS STORIES FROM LAST WEEK:
“There are plenty of indications that the immediate post-war period will bring a building boom the like of which this country has not yet witnessed in its history.” Walter Gropius, chairman of the department of architecture at Harvard University, told a large group of students and teachers at the College on Wednesday evening. He was speaking on “Site and Shelter After the War.” He added that building, because it is the second largest industry in the country next to agriculture, has the greatest potentialities of absorbing masses of job-seeking workers coming home from the war. “Moreover, a large back-log of savings will be in the hands of the people.”
Mr Gropius wondered if the country’s leaders in architectural thinking were prepared for the staggering tasks ahead. “Considering the recent evidence of our capability to gear the country’s industry for war production in a very short time, there can be hardly any doubt that we shall be technically fit to reorganize the huge machinery at hand for an equally tremendous volume of peace production,” he said. “But are we mentally and spiritually as well prepared to make this unique opportunity to construct our physical surroundings also a social and cultural success?”
Mr Gropius suggested that leaders should not think so much in technical and economical terms to prop up the post-war business hopes before they have conceived a constructive national over-all blue print. “They should think in terms of a well-balanced pattern of interrelated community units, better fitted for our democratic way of life than are our present chaotic cities.”
According to Mr Gropius, the most pressing need for post-war rehabilitation is “the all-important creation of properly sized neighborhood units to serve as basic organisms for reactivating social intercourse.” He suggested a turning from “the bewildering modern city’s chaos of competing individual stunts related neither to each other nor to the community” to a consideration again of the features of the old New England town where there is “a well-balanced, self-imposed order and unity which has obviously resulted from a highly integrated team spirit of the whole community.”
It is the Harvard architect’s idea that the proper scale of a basic neighborhood unit will always depend upon “pedestrian distances, in spite of our ever so much improved transportation facilities.” This fact would confine the basic community unit to an area with a radius
B M C Community Bulletin Summer Bulletin 9 Page 2
Of about one-half mile, enabling everyone of its inhabitants, not more than six thousand, to reach all points of his activity by foot in about ten or fifteen minutes at the most, either in city or in town. “The basic facilities to be provided within the area to make the unit self-contained are: proper dwelling and working places, an administration and shopping center; facilities for education, for recreation, and for worship; and a net of roads and pathways for communication.” Such a neighborhood unit may be located in the country, surrounded by an agricultural and park belt or be part of a large city.
“In a democracy the center of control lies with the people. The better the basic neighborhood unit fits the life of its people- from the cultural as well as from the practical aspect- the better the whole nation will function.”
Mr Gropius was introduced to the College Audience by Josef Albers, a former colleague in the Bauhaus in Germany.
“Each man who looks upon the world, or upon a work of art, sees something different; for he sees it through his experience, though his spiritual eye, the eye behind the physical eye.” JB Neumann, New York art dealer, was speaking to an audience of art and music students and teachers at the College on Thursday evening, giving them “An Introduction to Art.” He urged his listeners to widen and deepen their seeing experiences; by means of slides, he pointed out ways of looking at nature, at the drawings of prehistoric man, at art.
“Art is an expression of the spirit of man,” continued Mr Neumann. “When man is deeply concerned with materialism, his art reflects this concern; when he is preoccupied with great thoughts and with deep feelings of respect and love for humanity, his art creations mirror this preoccupation.” He showed slide-photographs of the interiors of nineteenth century homes of wealthy Americans, “expressions of a certain materialism” and commented: “The spirit that created those rooms may have done more to create the twentieth century chaos than we can realize.” Mr Neumann was concerned about the “art expressions” on the covers of pulp magazines. “They come out of a present-day mentality and exert a tremendous influence, for there are about fifteen million of them circulated each month.”
According to Mr Neumann, “The great artist contributes qualities lesser artists cannot contribute.” He spoke of the artist Breughel whose “canvas people are so alive you hear them snore”; of the artist Gross, who “looked at nature, left the naturalism, and put upon canvas abstractions of reality”; of Paul Klee’s “dreamed reality.”
Mr Neumann thinks that “great art is the great hope- art in every form. Youth comes through art. Art is the only thing that can make one happy, that can carry man to unlimited heights.”
WITH FORMERS STUDENTS:
News Notes:
Jack Gifford has just signed a contract for a forty weeks’ road tour with the Paul Robeson “Othelleo”, playing a small part and understudying the role of Roderigo.
NINTH CONCERT Saturday, September 2, 8:15 PM
CHORAL MUSIC
Women’s Choral
JACQUES ARCADELT (1514-1568)
Two French Chansons
Amour ha pouvoir sur les Dieux
Nous voyons que les hommes font tous verdu d’aimer
JOHN WILEYE (1574-1638)
English Madrigal
As fair as morn
PHILIPPE DE MONTE (1521-1603)
Crucifixus from the Mass “Quomodo dilexi”
Mixed Chorus
JOSQUIN DES PREZ (1450-1521)
Passion Motet “O Domine Jesu Christe”
JOSQUIN DE PREZ
Ave Maria
CIPRIANO DE RORE (1516-1565)
Dido’s Lament
CLAUDIO MOTEVERDI (1567-1643)
Ariadne’s Lament
A Capella Chorus
Conducted by Edward Lowinsky
MARK BRUNSWICK
Fragment of Sappho
Motet for Mixed Chorus (1937)
DARIUS MILHAUD
Cantata of War for Mixed Chorus (1940)
Words by Paul Claudel
Chorus of the Guilty
Vox Domini
Chorus of the Martyrs
God’s Own Hour
FRANZ SCHUBERT
Serenade Opus 135
For Solo, Women’s Chorus, and Piano (1827)
Words by Franz Grillparzer
Solo: Lotte Leonard
Piano: Frederic Cohen
Community Chorus
Conducted by Heinrich Jalowetz
Monday, September 4, 8:15 PM
Lecture by Ernst Krenek on “The Composer and the Interpreter”
Wednesday, September 6, 8:15 PM
Tenth Concert: Works by Arnold Schoenberg
Rudolf Kolisch, Lorna Freedman, Marcel Dick, Nikolai Graudan, Edward Steuermann.
Speaker: Ernst Krenek
Thursday, September 7, 8:15 PM
Lecture by JB Neumann on “The Evolution of Modern Art”
(Illustrated with slides)
Friday, September 8, 8:15 PM
Lecture by Barbara Morgan on Photography
Saturday, September 9, 8:15 PM
Eleventh Concert: Works by Arnold Schoenberg
