A01=Elizabeth Otto
Architecture
Author_Elizabeth Otto
Bahaus100
Bauhaus
Bauhaus 2019
Bauhaus Centenary
Bauhaus Centennial
Bauhaus women
Bauhausler
Category=AGA
Category=JBSF3
Category=QRYM2
design
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
gender
Graphic design
Gropius
Lucia Moholy
Marianne Brandt
modernism
modernisms
Moholy-Nage
Queer Bauhaus
Product details
- ISBN 9780262057134
- Dimensions: 178 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 17 Feb 2026
- Publisher: MIT Press Ltd
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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An investigation of the irrational and the unconventional currents swirling behind the Bauhaus's signature sleek surfaces and austere structures. The Bauhaus (1919 1933) is widely regarded as the twentieth century's most influential art, architecture, and design school, celebrated as the archetypal movement of rational modernism and famous for bringing functional and elegant design to the masses. In Haunted Bauhaus, art historian Elizabeth Otto liberates Bauhaus history, uncovering a movement that is vastly more diverse and paradoxical than previously assumed. Otto traces the surprising trajectories of the school's engagement with occult spirituality, gender fluidity, queer identities, and radical politics. The Bauhaus, she shows us, is haunted by these untold stories. The Bauhaus is most often associated with a handful of famous artists, architects, and designers notably Paul Klee, Walter Gropius, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Breuer. Otto enlarges this narrow focus by reclaiming the historically marginalized lives and accomplishments of many of the more than 1,200 Bauhaus teachers and students (the so-called Bauhausler), arguing that they are central to our understanding of this movement. Otto reveals Bauhaus members' spiritual experimentation, expressed in double-exposed spirit photographs and enacted in breathing exercises and nude gymnastics; their explorations of the dark sides of masculinity and emerging female identities; the queer hauntology of certain Bauhaus works; and the role of radical politics on both the left and the right during the school's Communist period, when some of the Bauhausler put their skills to work for the revolution, and, later, into the service of the Nazis. With Haunted Bauhaus, Otto not only expands our knowledge of a foundational movement of modern art, architecture, and design, she also provides the first sustained investigation of the irrational and the unconventional currents swirling behind the Bauhaus's signature sleek surfaces and austere structures. This is a fresh, wild ride through the Bauhaus you thought you knew.
Elizabeth Otto, Guggenheim Fellow, Professor of art history and gender studies, and Director of the Humanities Institute at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), is the author of Tempo, Tempo! The Bauhaus Photomontages of Marianne Brandt and the coauthor of Bauhaus Women: A Global Perspective. Her coedited books include Bauhaus Bodies: Gender, Sexuality, and Body Culture in Modernism s Legendary Art School. Haunted Bauhaus is the recipient of the Peter C. Rollins Book Prize.
