Library lecture explores the Baroque and Bauhaus movements

By Mary Goldmeer
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The Georgia T. Lord Library opened its doors  to residents stepping into centuries of art and architecture. The free public lecture, “The Baroque and the Bauhaus: Art Movements that Influenced Architecture & Design,” guided guests on a journey across continents, political eras, and artistic revolutions.

The hourlong program, presented by Phoenix Art Museum docent Dawn Van Scoik, examined two movements that could hardly look more different: the dramatic, gold-laden Baroque period of 17th-century Europe and the stark, minimalist Bauhaus aesthetic born in Germany more than 250 years later.

Van Scoik, a trained interior designer and adjunct professor, didn’t just show pictures. She drew connections between politics and ornamentation, faith and form, industry and innovation.

The lecture took place in the library’s Community Room at 1900 N. Civic Square, part of Goodyear’s growing Civic Square campus. Residents settled into rows of chairs while an array of projected slides flicked through paintings, palaces, Bauhaus chairs and art that played with mechanical abstraction. 

Van Scoik began with the Baroque period, a style that arose in Italy in the late 1500s and spread across Europe, deeply intertwined with the Catholic Church’s Counter-Reformation mission.

“It’s drama,” she said. “It’s meant to move you emotionally. It’s meant to draw you in, to create awe.”

Through images of shadow-drenched biblical scenes and lifelike sculptures, Van Scoik demonstrated how Baroque art served as both spiritual spectacle and political theater. In architecture, massive domes, flowing curves and lavish decoration sought to embody divine authority and earthly power all at once.

“Look at the use of light,” she said, pointing to a slide of Versille’s Hall of Mirrors  where reflections of natural light make the room look endless. “This isn’t accidental, it’s storytelling through architecture.”

But the lecture didn’t linger in the past.

With a few clicks, the slides jumped forward three centuries to the early 20th century, to post–World War I Germany where a new school, the Bauhaus, set out to reconcile fine art with industrial design.

“If Baroque was about grandeur and emotion, Bauhaus was about stripping everything back to what’s essential,” Van Scoik said. “Form follows function. Materials are honest. Decoration isn’t necessary, the beauty is in how something works.”

The Bauhaus, founded in 1919, combined craftsmanship and modern manufacturing in ways that reshaped not only furniture and textiles, but entire cities.

“Think about modern offices, think about apartment buildings with clean lines, think about furniture that can be mass produced,” Van Scoik said. “That’s the Bauhaus legacy.”

Van Scoik spoke not only as a docent, but as someone who has spent decades in design. With a Bachelor of Fine Arts in interior design, she has worked with clients, taught students and now shares that experience with the public through museum outreach.

“I thought, let’s show something completely different,” she said. “And in doing that, you can start to see the threads of how society, politics, religion, and economics all leave fingerprints on art.”

Van Scoik said Bauhaus principles still influence everything from IKEA furniture to Apple product design and that Baroque design is coming back into style with the rise of maximalist home aesthetics.  

“These movements (we discussed) are completely different, but they both became global influences,” Van Scoik told the audience. “You can see how different they actually are and how important they are.”

The library’s next scheduled talk in the series, “Art and History Unite: Christopher Columbus to George Washington,” will explore portraits, symbolism and political messaging in the early modern era. It’s scheduled for 1 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 6.

Visit mcldaz.org for more information or to register for future programs.