Into the Blue

Episode 2: Haunted Bauhaus with Libby Otto

Haunted Bauhaus with Libby Otto

Cover of Elizabeth Otto's newest book, "Haunted Bauhaus: Occult Spirituality, Gender Fluidity, Queer Identities, and Radical Politics."

Frederika "Friedl" Dicker-Brandeis (Public Domain)

Friedl Dicker (Friedl Dicker-Brandeis), Study of Form and Tone (Form und Tonstudien), 1919, chalk on black paper. 12.8 x 8.9 in. (32.5 x 22.5 cm). Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

Helena Mandlovà, Prague Castle, collage on board, 1943. Collection of The Jewish Museum in Prague.

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To see additional images of art mentioned in the podcast, visit the website of the Jewish Museum in Prague.

Elizabeth Otto, a professor of art history, is the author of the new book, “Haunted Bauhaus: Occult Spirituality, Gender Fluidity, Queer Identities, and Radical Politics.” In this installment of Into the Blue, Otto shares the story of Friedl Dicker, a multitalented artist and teacher, who used the German art school’s innovative methods to help heal children during one of Europe’s darkest periods.

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Download a transcript of Episode 2

Elizabeth "Libby" Otto, Professor of Art History and Visual Studies.

Read Otto's full bio

Elizabeth “Libby” Otto is an art and cultural historian whose research centers on early twentieth-century visual and media culture, with a focus on Europe.

An expert in modern art, Dada, surrealism, cubism and gender, Otto has investigated topics including the history of new media, film, gender and photography, and media culture.

She co-edited “The New Woman International: Photographic Representations, from the 1870s through the 1960s,” and “Passages of Exile,” which takes a closer look at routes of exodus as spaces of artistic, filmic and literary resonance from the twentieth century to the present.

Otto has also published extensively on the Bauhaus, widely considered 20th-century Europe’s most influential art institution. Her books on this topic — including books co-authored or co-edited with colleagues — range from “Haunted Bauhaus,” which challenges conventional understandings of the Bauhaus, to “Bauhaus Women: A Global Perspective” and “Bauhaus Bodies: Gender, Sexuality, and Body Culture in Modernism’s Legendary Art School,”