Il fallimento del progetto e il disordine del destino: Giulio Carlo Argan, il Bauhaus e la crisi della ragione

Abstract

The industrial design imagined by Gropius – art at the service of industry – has become, as Argan has said, a project to serve the consumer. Today, mass production realized in an exemplary manner what Argan understood well in advance: while it makes furniture and soft furnishings available to everybody at a low cost, it is not an evolution of society, but only an ecstatic exaltation of consumption. The death of art is sanctioned by the loss of the highest bet placed by Bauhaus: the confident expectation that the renewed design capacity could achieve, through aesthetics, a vehicle of ethical values. The analysis of the Bauhaus aesthetic of Argan exemplifies a method for revising the philosophy of the idealistic type. Argan’s effort was not to propose an idealistic interpretation released from the sources and the works. From his point of view philosophy does not belong to a world apart, but enters the real world and draws from it abundantly. The products of art that occupy a physical and symbolic space allow this direct comparison between the world of ideas and that of sense experience. The conclusions are in close relation with this method of analysis.