One of the most influential artist-educators of the twentieth century, Josef Albers was a member of the Bauhaus during the 1920s and of the Yale faculty from 1950 to his death in 1976. In 1971 Albers was the first living artist ever to be given a solo retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The lithographs in this exhibit are illustrations from Albers's book Interaction of Color. Like the book, they are a record of an experimental way of studying and teaching color. They start from the recognition that, in visual perception, a color is almost never seen as it physically is but is, instead, highly dependent on form and placement and its interaction with other colors.
As Albers remarks, "Just as the knowledge of acoustics does not make one musical...so no color system by itself can develop one's sensitivity for color." What counts, for Albers, is vision—vision derived from experience, but "coupled with fantasy, with imagination."
Interaction of Color
On view:
September 3, 2008 to October 29, 2008