Josef Albers - Eyes Quotes

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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
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
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
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