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.

'Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)