Interaction of Color: 50th Anniversary Edition

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Hundreds of people can talk, for one who can think,” John Ruskin wrote, “but thousands of people can think, for one who can see.” “We see, but we do not see: we use our eyes, but our gaze is glancing, frivolously considering its object,” Alexandra Horowitz lamented in her sublime meditation on looking. Hardly anyone has accomplished more in revolutionizing the art of seeing than German-born American artist, poet, printmaker, and educator Josef Albers (March 19, 1888–March 25, 1976), as celebrated for his iconic abstract paintings as he was for his vibrant wit and spellbinding presence as a classroom performer. In 1963, he launched into the world what would become the most influential exploration of the art, science, psychology, practical application, and magic of color — an experiment, radical and brave at the time, seeking to cultivate a new way of studying and understanding color through experience and trial-and-error rather than through didactic, theoretical dogma. Half a century later, Interaction of Color ( public library), with its illuminating visual exercises and mind-bending optical illusions, remains an indispensable blueprint to the art of seeing.

In the ensuing years — Albers would live until 1976 — the author continued to work on his celebrated series of paintings, “ Homage to the Square,” in which he played with color in nestled squares. The series ultimately numbered about 2,000 artworks, many produced in Albers’s home studio in Connecticut, and at least one of which the artist gifted to Kerr. Albers also took on commissions for public artworks, including murals in the Pan Am (now MetLife) Building in Manhattan and for a landmark development in central Sydney, Australia, as well as works for Stanford University and other patrons. (Some were completed after his death.) Jameson, Dorothea. Some Misunderstandings about Color Perception, Color Mixture and Color Measurement. Leonardo, vol. 16, no. 1, 1983, pp. 41-42. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1575043.

50th Anniversary Edition

First, it should be learned that one and the same color evokes innumerable readings. Instead of mechanically applying or merely implying laws and rules of color harmony, distinct color effects are produced-through recognition of the interaction of color-by making, for instance, two very different colors look alike, or nearly alike. THE RELATIVITY OF COLOR Yale University [ edit ] Josef Albers, Proto-Form (B), oil on fiberboard, 1938, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

This book, written almost 60 years ago, does not touch on how colors are viewed, used and manipulated in this digital age. An absence that will only grow more pronounced as "colored papers", the principal material used in the book for practice, become more and more scarce.

Elephant and Artsy have come together to present This Artwork Changed My Life, a creative collaboration that shares the stories of life-changing encounters with art. A new piece will be published every two weeks on both Elephant and Artsy . Together, our publications want to celebrate the personal and transformative power of art. Architype Albers (large typeface based on Albers' 1927–1931 experimentation with geometrically constructed stencil types for posters and signs) If you are interested in learning about the interaction of color in a non-classroom situation, then I recommend looking beyond this title. Albers does though provide some clues to seek classical thinking on this subject.