Josef Albers: Quotes about colors

Josef Albers was German-American artist and educator. Explore interesting quotes on color.
Josef Albers: 66   quotes 1   like

“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.
Often, with paintings, more attention is drawn to the outer, physical, structure of the color means than to the inner, functional, structure of the color action... Here now follow a few details of the technical manipulation of the colorants which in my painting usually are oil paints and only rarely casein paints.
On a ground of the whitest white available – half or less absorbent – and built up in layers – on the rough side of panels of untempered Masonite – paint is applied with a palette knife directly from the tube to the panel and as thin and even as possible in one primary coat. Consequently there is no under or over painting or modeling or glazing and no added texture – so-called... As a result this kind of painting presents an inlay (intarsia) of primary thin paints films – not layered, laminated, nor mixed wet, half or more dry, paint skins.
Such homogeneous thin and primary films will dry, that is, oxidize, of course, evenly – and so without physical and/or chemical complication – to a healthy, durable paint surface of increasing luminosity.”

Josef Albers

4 quotes from: 'The Color in my Painting'
Homage to the square' (1964)

Color , Painting , Dependency

“I think it's true, as many say, I have dealt for many years with the problems that w: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

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Art , Color , Way , Problem

“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

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Color , Way , Question , Light

“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

Source: Homage to the square' (1964), A conversation with Josef Albers' (1970), p. 459

Color , Drawing , Painting

“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

Quoted in: Margaret Walch (1979) Color source book, p. 98

Art , Color

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

Josef Albers

Quoted in: Faber Birren (1976) Color Perception in Art. p. 20

Color

“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

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Books , Art , Color , Way

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

Josef Albers

Source: De tweede Helft Ad de Visser, SUN Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 1998, p. 123

Color , Painting

“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

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Books , Art , Color , Mood

“Seeing several of these paintings [his series paintings 'Hommage to the square', Josef Albers painted in 1963-64] next to each other makes it obvious that each painting is an instrumentation on its own.
This means that they all are of different palettes, and, therefore, so to speak, of different climates.
Choice of the colors used, as well as their order, is aimed at an interaction – influencing and changing each other forth and back.
Thus, character and feeling alter from painting to painting without any additional 'handwriting' or, so-called, texture.
Though the underlying symmetrical and quasi-concentric order of squares remains the same in all paintings – in proportion and placement – these same squares group or single themselves, connect and separate in many different ways
In consequence, they move forth and back, in and out, and grow up and down and near and far, as well as enlarged and diminished. All this to proclaim color autonomy as a means of plastic organization.”

Josef Albers

6 short quotes from: 'The Origin of Art'
Homage to the square' (1964)

Color , Way , Feeling , Change

“I want color and form to have contradictorily functions.”

Josef Albers

Quote from: 'Albers Paints a Picture' Elaine de Kooning, Art News 49, November 1950, p. 57; as quoted in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 67

Color