Elizabeth Otto: Queer Bauhaus Women and Other Hidden Histories

Bauhaus (1919–1933) is generally regarded as the most influential school of art, architecture, and design of the twentieth century, celebrated as the archetypal movement of rational modernism and renowned for bringing functional and elegant design to the masses. In this lecture, art historian Elizabeth Otto addresses the previously unexplored question of sexuality and gender fluidity at the Bauhaus, focusing on the women Bauhauslers, including Florence Henri, Margaret Camilly Leiteritz, and the duo ringl + pit, who defied the school's aesthetic to disrupt gender conventions, represent lesbian subjectivity, and portray same-sex desire. This lecture, with its broad perspective on what Jack Halberstam calls a queer way of life – which encompasses “subcultural practices, alternative methods of alliance [and] forms of transgender embodiment” – disrupts the narrative of normative Bauhaus and brings forth a rich history that only emerges when we look at a new range of works and artists of the Bauhaus and reconsider the questions we pose to them.
Elizabeth Otto is an art and culture historian who engages with visual and media culture of the early twentieth century, focusing on Europe. She is an expert in modern art, Dadaism, surrealism, cubism, and gender, and explores themes such as the history of new media, film, gender, and photography, and media culture. She is the co-editor of the books The New Woman International: Photographic Representations, from the 1870s through the 1960s (2011, co-editor Vanessa Rocco) and Passages of Exile (2017, co-editor Burcu Dogramaci), which closely examines pathways of exile as spaces of artistic, filmic, and literary resonance from the twentieth century to the present. Otto has also published extensively on the Bauhaus, which is widely considered the most influential artistic institution of the 20th century in Europe. Her books on this subject include Haunted Bauhaus: Occult Spirituality, Gender Fluidity, Queer Identities, and Radical Politics (2019), which challenges conventional understandings of the Bauhaus, Bauhaus Women: A Global Perspective (2019, co-editor Patrick Rössler), and Bauhaus Bodies: Gender, Sexuality, and Body Culture in Modernism’s Legendary Art School (2019, co-editor Patrick Rössler). Elizabeth Otto is a professor of art history at the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences.
The lecture is organized in collaboration with the Royal College of Art, School of Architecture as part of the exhibition of the Centre for Documentary Architecture The Matter of Data: Concrete Narratives across the Sykes-Picot Border.
Registration for the online lecture here.