OLD AND BUSTED: From Bauhaus to Our House.

The New Hotness? From Bauhaus to Our Skatepark! Mark Judge test rides The Beautiful New Carver Bauhaus Skateboard.

It’s a perfect fit for a skateboard. Because the German Bauhaus Movement (1919-1933) combined fine art and functional craft, many of its most lasting works were not necessarily painting and sculpture, but furniture, craft and home design. Marcel Breuer, Marianne Brandt, and others created the minimalism that would influence the furniture and utensils of the 1950s-60s, and architects such as Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe were the forefathers of the International Style that still exists in architecture.

The Carvehaus art design is two circles, red and blue, intersecting, with a curve of yellow where they overlap. It signals pure early-20th century modernism. As is always the case with Carvers, the patented deck, truck and wheels are top flight—industrial, indestructible, archetypal and beautiful; Bauhaus masterpieces themselves. For me modernism has also always had a profound spiritual power. Although the movement is considered an artistic break from the past, and it was, there’s also something godly and familiar in the shapes and designs. Carl Jung was right that there are archetypes that have always existed that we don’t create but can discover. It’s why Piet Mondrian’s squares seem both new and familiar, why Picasso hits us with something new yet also buried deep in the psyche, why Rothko’s shapes evoke not just radicalism but contemplation. It’s why minimalism in music such as the composer Philip Glass can be both soulful and surprising. As Chesterton said, the Christian can believe in both fate and free will.

As Mies van der Rohe never said, God is in the gnarliness. Read the whole thing.