Josef Albers Quotes

28 Sourced Quotes

Amateurism is an emptiness and I accept it because it has no preconceived ideas or rules to be applied. This is for me [as art teacher] a most welcome situation and I like to keep my students amateurs and dilettantes.

Josef Albers
Whether something 'has color' or not is as hard to define verbally as are such questions as, 'What is music?' or 'What is musical?

Josef Albers
I have taught – until 10 years ago – for nearly 40 years, that is almost half of my life. And when I think that over – now afterwards -, I come to a surprising conclusion, namely that I did not teach arts as such, but philosophy and psychology of art.

Josef Albers
Duplicity in events: What happens here as new, happens somewhere else just the same way. That's so exciting. That is one of the secrets of life. Why did I sometimes build a lamp in the Bauhaus and somebody comes from Holland and says, 'Oh, somebody in Holland makes just the same lamp.' Such duplicity shows that the time is ripe for a problem and thus it is in the air, and will be solved here – and there. With this we are finding the 'creative process', for which somebody is coming to ask me about. I would say, 'I paint because I have no time not to paint.' That's my creative process.

Josef Albers
I have not built any theory. I have only tried to build up sensitive eyes, as my book says. And I have tried to achieve that by aiming at very distinct color relationships again – like how do they influence each other? Change each other in light and in intensity, in transparency, opacity? How do they change each other in all different directions? That we make all the students aware, through experience, that color is the most relative medium in art, and that we never really see what we see. All neighboring means which occur every minute different, not only in changing light but also by our changing moods. And in the end, the study of color again is a study of ourselves.

Josef Albers
I discovered soon that teaching has the handicap of retrospection. And that I don't believe in. So I started instead a method of handling material with the material itself. So that was my main change. Whereas Itten before had only spoken about the appearance, 'matiere' - (the French word) and I said I would turn from 'matiere' - the outside - to the inside, to the capacity of the material, before the appearance. And that changed the attitude basically I think.

Josef Albers
I did not teach painting but seeing. I concentrated on the basic courses for beginners. I taught drawing (purposely without nudes), color (without any painting as such) and design (as 'structural organization'). And so the graduate students came 'down' to the basic courses for beginners.

Josef Albers
I would say, 'My things have the look of icons.' Unconsciously they look at you not as my face is now – you see me in profile – icons are only this way. And so are my paintings.

Josef Albers
In visual perception a color is almost never seen as it really is — as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art.

Josef Albers
I say all the time, if I sell that to you, you pay me for 3 colors. And I sell you 4, I betray you. Not to cheat you, but to pet you. You see I betray you in a positive way. I make you see more than there is. And that's in all my art that way. Absolutely something else. And that's what my book is about. You never see what you see. I lead you to see something else. And therefore I direct you. That's help.

Josef Albers
A painter works to formulate with or in colors... My paintings follow the second option.

Josef Albers
In order to use color effectively it is necessary to recognize that color deceives continually.

Josef Albers
The concern of the artist is with the discrepancy between physical fact and psychological effect.

Josef Albers
Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.

Josef Albers
I want color and form to have contradictorily functions.

Josef Albers
For me, abstraction is real, probably more real than nature. I'll go further and say that abstraction is nearer my heart. I prefer to see with closed eyes.

Josef Albers
But besides relatedness and influence I should like to see that my colors remain, as much as possible, a 'face' –their own 'face', as it was achieved – uniquely — and I believe consciously — in Pompeian wall-paintings — by admitting coexistence of such polarities as being dependent and independent — being dividual and individual.

Josef Albers
That question is so big that there is no end [Albers refers here to the relationship between colors and the source of light]. You see, they have just you cannot participate with it if you have not lubricated your eyes very thoroughly to see the little changes produced in our eye that has another action than any optical apparatus like photography. We must know that we have two ways of seeing. For instance, when we are indoors another part of the retina is engaged compared with when we are outdoors. If we are in warm light or cool light, in higher light or lower light.

Josef Albers
Seeing several of these paintings [his series paintings 'Hommage to the square', painted in 1963-64] next to each other makes it obvious that each painting is an instrumentation on its own.

Josef Albers
I think it's true, as many say, I have dealt for many years with the problems that Op art so-called, is dealing with. For many years I have studied the logic and magic of color. And so I know what's involved when it comes to the interaction of colors, more than many who refuse to study it. But I found a way to study it, I think, that's all. And besides I refuse to be the father of a new bandwagon.

Josef Albers
Independent of harmony rules, any color 'goes' or 'works' with any other color, presupposing that their quantities are appropriate.

Josef Albers
Every perception of colour is an illusion.... we do not see colours as they really are. In our perception they alter one another.

Josef Albers
In 1923, when I had been a student at the 'Bauhaus' in Weimar.... Gropius [the director of Bauhaus] asked me to teach the basic course 'Werklehhre'. He wanted me to introduce newcomers to the principles of handicrafts. He knew that I came from that background and had appropriate practice and knowledge.

Josef Albers
THE ORIGIN OF ART: The discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect.
THE CONTENT OF ART: Visual information of our reaction to life. THE MEASURE OF ART: The ratio of effort to effect.
THE AIM OF ART: Revelation and evocation of vision.

Josef Albers
I made true the first English sentence [Albers came from Germany] that I uttered (better stuttered) on our arrival at Black Mountain College in November 1933 [right after the closing of the w. Bauhaus art school in Dessau Germany, by the Nazi's] When a student asked me what I was going to teach I said: 'to open eyes'. And this has become the motto of all my teaching [famous pupils of Joseph Albers at Black Mountain College were for instance the young generation starting American artists, like Robert Rauschenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, Cy Twombly, Ray Johnson and Susan Weil.

Josef Albers
Art is not to be looked at. Art is looking at us. What is art to others is not necessarily art to me. Nor for the same reason and vice versa. What was art to me or was not some time ago might have lost that value or gained it in the meantime and maybe again though art is not an object but experience. To be able to perceive it we need to be receptive. Therefore art is there where art meets us now. The content of art is visual formulation of our relation to life. The measure of art, the ratio of effort to effect, the aim of art revelation and evocation of vision.

Josef Albers
I have received a question I have expected, 'Don't you deal with accidents?' Yes, I deal with accidents, just as Arp admits it all the time. And I admit it, too. But I like to have them under my command and not sign them because they are accidents. If it remains only accident then sign it 'accident' or 'fate' or 'the Lord', whatever you prefer. It's not you because you have not visioned it. You see visual formulation deals with vision, visual information and visual reaction. So I speak differently from all those who deliver themselves to uncontrolled accidents.

Josef Albers
If one says 'Red' and there are 50 people listening, it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.

Josef Albers