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Josef Albers Quotes
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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
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Whether something 'has color' or not is as hard to define verbally as are such questions as, 'What is music?' or 'What is musical?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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A painter works to formulate with or in colors... My paintings follow the second option.
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In order to use color effectively it is necessary to recognize that color deceives continually.
Josef Albers
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The concern of the artist is with the discrepancy between physical fact and psychological effect.
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Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.
Josef Albers
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I want color and form to have contradictorily functions.
Josef Albers
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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Independent of harmony rules, any color 'goes' or 'works' with any other color, presupposing that their quantities are appropriate.
Josef Albers
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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Quote of the day
The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more.
Mary Shelley
Josef Albers
Wikipedia
Born:
March 19, 1888
Died:
March 25, 1976
(aged 88)
Bio:
Josef Albers was a German-born American artist and educator whose work, both in Europe and in the United States, formed the basis of some of the most influential and far-reaching art education programs of the twentieth century.
Known for:
Interaction of Color (1963)
Poems and Drawings (1961)
Josef Albers
Homage to the Square Journal
Squares & Other Shapes: With Josef Albers
Most used words:
art
color
visual
light
time
life
paintings
teach
years
study
accidents
fact
students
eyes
vision
Josef Albers on Wikipedia
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