Less is more – Bauhauson innen és túl
Less is More – Before and After Bauhaus

Summary/Abstract: The “less is more” motto is one of the most successful cultural memes related to Bauhaus. This famous dictum, widely attributed to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, has first become popular within the discourse of architecture, and originally referred to a clean, functional and ornament-free approach. This study analyzes the antecedents and the afterlife of the motto, from its first written occurrence (in a line in a Robert Browning poem) until its interpretations which have come to define the 20th century (Clement Greenberg’s formalism, in which “less” points toward the autonomy of art, and A. C. Danto’s contextualism, where it cleans up the space of conceptual art). While the art historical consequences of the motto can hardly be overstated, the social effects of “less is more” also reveal the downsides of simplicity: “less”, as understood in Bauhaus, does not mean cheaper or more accessible. Hence, the question arises whether our aestheticized world, ultimately rooted in Bauhaus, is sustainable without endangering the environment.

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