Albers, Josef

Josef Albers: Formulation: Articulation

A sumptuously produced introduction to the ideas and methods of one of the most influential artists and theorists of the twentieth century.

First issued in 1972 as a limited edition set of prints, Formulation: Articulation is being published in book form for the first time. Josef Albers drew on over forty years' work in a variety of media—woodcuts, sandblasted glass pictures, and oil paintings—for these poetic explorations of color and form. Created just four years before his death in 1976, the images can be seen as the summation of Albers's creative life.

Albers was a student and a teacher at the Bauhaus from 1920 to 1933, escaped to America and taught at Black Mountain College until 1949, and was chairman of the Department of Design at Yale University until 1958. As both artist and teacher he influenced innumerable artists, including Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Robert Rauschenberg. Albers's seminal text, Interaction of Color (1963), which was translated into eight languages, affected art teaching all over the world.

This book embodies all the elements of Albers's lifetime preoccupation with abstraction, color, and perception. He draws the viewer into a dynamic relationship with his work, showing how color can have deceptive and unpredictable effects, depending on how it interacts with other colors. The order of the 127 illustrations was carefully chosen by Albers so that they can be examined and appreciated for their visual interaction or as beautiful works of art in their own right. They appear alone on the page, in pairs, or sometimes four together.

The accompanying text includes key passages from Albers's own writings, printed on special foldout sections, and the introduction by noted critic T. G. Rosenthal includes comparative and contextual illustrations. 150 illustrations, 127 in color.

Josef Albers: To Open Eyes: The Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, and Yale

The First Comprehensive Book to Examine the Teaching Methods of the Artist Renowned for the Homage to the Square Paintings.

Josef Albers (1888-1976) has long been admired for his progressive vision as an artist who blurred distinctions between fine and applied art, but rarely has his work as a teacher been examined in detail. The German-born artist was a remarkable classroom performer whose colorful language, wit, and dramatic flair held his students spellbound and turned his lessons into high adventure. Whether at the Bauhaus in prewar Germany, Black Mountain College in rural North Carolina during the 1930s and 1940s, or at Yale in the 1950s, Albers was driven by one thing--the desire to open his students' eyes to a different way of perceiving art and, ultimately, life.

JOSEF ALBERS: TO OPEN EYES by Frederick A. Horowitz and Brenda Danilowitz, is the first book to focus on how the legendary artist Josef Albers influenced generations of artists, architects, and designers, including Robert Mangold, Robert Rauschenberg, Donald Judd, Bertrand Goldberg, and Tom Geismar, through his work and legacy as an educator. Marking the 30th anniversary of Albers's death, the book examines his life and teaching methods, and reveals his philosophies on art, life, and the nature of perception based on first-hand accounts of more than 175 students and colleagues spanning more than 40 years. The book will coincide with a major exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art which will run from November 2, 2006- January 21, 2007.

JOSEF ALBERS: TO OPEN EYES takes the reader through Albers's life in teaching. He began his career in 1923, when Walter Gropius invited him to join the faculty of the Bauhaus in Germany, where he quickly replaced the school's standard course curriculum with his own innovative methods. After moving to the United States in 1933, he and his wife Anni became founding members and teachers at the experimental start-up Black Mountain College. In 1950, he was appointed to head Yale's newly restructured Department of Design and remained there until he retired in 1958.

Although he is widely perceived as a strong-minded theoretician, as this book reveals, Albers opposed rigid dogma and encouraged his students to develop lively and original solutions to his many and varied design exercises. On their first day in his classroom, Albers's students were informed that his goal was to educate their eyes and that he was going to teach them how to think and to see--an agenda belied by the somewhat prosaic course names "Basic Drawing" and "Basic Design" and "Color."

With energy and flair, Danilowitz and Horowitz have charted Albers's world-changing role as a teacher. Through their archival research of original correspondence, documents, student course notes, and student work produced in his courses, and their interviews of former students, colleagues, and associates of Albers, they reveal the way that Albers's ideas on education and his complex personality have made an indelible imprint in the lives and work of artists all over the world. This book provides not only a compelling study of a key figure of 20th century art, but also ponders what constitutes art and how it is made and taught.

Anni & Josef Albers

Josef Albers (1888-1976) was a highly influential painter, color theorist and teacher--a monumental figure in international post-war art and aesthetics; his wife and artistic equal, Anni Albers (1899-1994), created important textile artworks as well as spare and abstract paintings and drawings. Together, their artistic roots can be traced to the time they shared at the Bauhaus in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s. After immigrating to the United States in 1933, the couple traveled regularly to Mexico and South America to study the art, architecture and textile designs of pre-Columbian cultures.
Featuring previously unseen letters, manuscripts and photographs by the artists, as well as lush color plates of their artworks, this catalogue is the first to document the influence of Central and South America on the Albers' work. It also makes the case that their art, as we know it today, cannot be understood without acknowledging their pivotal encounters in Latin America, for Anni's weavings, drawings and painted studies demonstrate her deep knowledge of pre-Columbian textiles, and Josef's paintings and photographs testify to the development of his unique sense of color in Mexico, as well as the formation of his independent concepts of photography and Formalism. One particularly stunning chapter, Hommage to the Pyramid includes Josef Albers' photographic collages of South American Meso-American pyramids. The abstract, graphic quality of these images refers directly and surprisingly to both artists' paintings and textiles.

Josef Albers: Glass, Color, and Light (Guggenheim Museum)

Josef Albers: A Retrospective

Josef + Anni Albers: Designs for Living

The first comprehensive book on the furniture, textiles and the other works of two of the most important and influential artists of the twentieth century. Features innovative objects that the couple designed for their homes while teaching at the Bauhaus in Germany and following their move to the United States in 1933. Includes specially commissioned photographs of important but little-known works. Illuminating essays celebrate the AlbersesÂ’ endless creativity and set their ground-breaking work in the context of international Modernism.

Josef Albers Prints, 1915-1970

The Prints of Josef Albers: A Catalogue Raisonne 1915-1976

This volume provides a comprehensive record of the entire graphic oeuvre of this addictive maker of prints.

Color Function Painting: The Art of Josef Albers, Julian Stanczak and Richard Anuszkiewicz

This publication addresses the nature and function of color in painting. Since perception is subjective, two prominent scholars have written essays to describe how the mind perceives what the eye sees. The artists whose works are contemplated in this volume - Josef Albers and two of his students - Julian Stanczak and Richard Anuszkiewicz, use geometric abstraction to commence their inquiries into the function of color.

These artists are frequently labeled as "Optical" or "Op" artists because the Op Art movement was named for StanczakÂ’s first exhibition in New York in 1964, and all three artists were included in the 1965 Museum of Modern Art exhibition, "The Responsive Eye." Although the Op Art label is historically accurate, all three of these artists are foremost colorists. As a result, they are different than most Op Artists, since most Op Artists focus more on pattern than color.

This publication was issued in connection with an exhibition at Wake Forest University in 1996. It contains essays by Sanford Wurmfeld, a color painter and professor at Hunter College in New York, and Floyd Ratliff, Professor Emeritus of Rockefeller University. RatliffÂ’s essay is perhaps the best, most understandable essay ever written to explain the psychological and physiological processes involved in color vision.

Josef Albers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: An Exhibition of His Paintings and Prints