Josef Albers - Color Quotes

12 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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
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 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 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
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