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Josef Albers JOSEF ALBERS i! %I Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Library and Archives http://www.archive.org/details/josefalbersretroOOalbe JOSEFALBERSrA Retrospective Albers in his Bauhaus studio, Dessau, 19J Photo by Umbo JOSEF ALBERS A Retrospective Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York This exhibition has received grants from BASF Corporation and the Federal Republic of Germany. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Albers, Josef. Josef Albers: a retrospective/Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. p. cm. Text by Nicholas Fox Weber et al. Catalog of an exhibition held at Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1988. Bibliography: p. 293 Paper ISBN 0-89207-067-6 Cloth ISBN 0-8109-1876-5 i. Albers, Josef-Exhibitions. I. Weber, Nicholas Fox, 1947- II. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. III. Title. N6888.A5A4 1988 709'.z'4-dci9 87-36930 Published by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1988 Copyright © 1988 by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York "Josef Albers" by Jean Arp published by permission of Fondation Arp, Clamart Cover: cat. no. 190, Variant: hum Reds Around Blue. 1948. Private Collection for Anni Albers Lenders to the Exhibition Anni Albers Mark Simon, Connecticut Hollins College, Roanoke, Virginia Bill Bass, Chicago Andrea and John Weil, Saskatoon Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebxk, Denmark Ernst Beyeler, Basel Martina and Michael Yamin The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. James H.Clark, Jr., Dallas New York Addison Gallery' of American Art, Esther M. Cole Phillips Academy, Andover, Musee National dArt Moderne, Centre Massachusetts Georges Pompidou, Paris Theodore and Barbara Dreier The Josef Albers Foundation The Museum of Modern An, New York Mr. and Mrs. Lee V. Eastman Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Mr. and Mrs. Paul M. Hirschland, W. Germany New York Staatliche Museen Preussischer Australian National Gallery, Canberra Kulturbesitz, Nationalgalerie, Berlin Maria and Conrad Janis, Beverly Hills Bauhaus-Archiv, W. Berlin Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford Donald and Barbara Jonas Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, New Ha Don Page, New York New York Maximilian Schell Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Ex Libris, New York Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Hannelore B. Schulhof, New York Washington, D.C. Prakapas Gallery, New York Table of Contents Juergen F. Strube Sponsor's Statement Diane WalJman Preface and Acknowledgments Nicholas Fox Weber The Artist as Alchemist Mary Emma Harris 50 Josef Albers: Art Education at Black Mountain College Charles E. Rickar s8 A Structural Analysis of Sonic of Albcrs's Work Neal Benezra 64 New Challenges Beyond the Studio: The Murals and Sculpture of Josef Albers Catalogue 187 Chronology 293 Selected Bibliography 197 Selected Exhibitions and Reviews Photographic Credits [OSEF ALBERS The beautiful pictures of our ugly age should be scot and read with the eyes of a child. The pictures ofAlbers are not only a treat for the eye but they also convey meaning. They grow in profundity as they are looked at with eyes uncorrupted, and grasped penetratingly. They are like the wood into which one calls and from which it echoes as you are called. Like nature they are a mirror. Each of his pictures has a heart. They never break into bits, crumble, turn into dust. The are not castigated lashes. They have a clear and great content: Here 1 stand. I am resting. I am in this world and on earth. I do not hurry away. I won't have anyone harass and exasperate me. I am not a frantic machine. I am not faint-hearted. I can wait. I do not drive myself from the picture into the incommensurate. I do not drive myself into bottomless depth. Many of my friends and their pictures do no longer want to be here. Neither friend nor picture have any longer an existence. They want to go to the devil. How one longs in their presence for an Albers. The world that Albers creates carries in its heart the inner weight of the fulfilled man. To be blessed ive have to have faith. This holds also for art and above all for the art of our time. Who would have forseen that our earth would be so led by our brain to unbelief, to noise, to mechanical frenzy, to carefully recorded raggedness, to teleguided disbelief. jean arp, Ascona, 1957 Translated from the German original by Anni Albers m 'IHiWtW Albers at his home in New Haven, 1965 Photo by Jon Naar Sponsor's Statement BASF is pleased to be the corporate sponsor of the As a company rooted in European pioneering of first major retrospective of the works ofJosef Albers. chemical synthesis, BASF is also accustomed to seeing the world in new ways. The company's innovativeness Upon his emigration from Germany to the United in science and technology has become well established States in i_933, American artists had as yet little ex- in North America. posure to the advanced trends and ideas then current in Europe. Albers became their recognized champion in BASF is therefore proud to sponsor this unprecedented the New World. His achievements served as a major in- chronological overview of the rich and varied scope fluence in the training of artists, architects and designers. of Albers's work at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. In later years, Albers's theories on light, color and perception influenced computer techniques, particu- larly in color control of videos. It can be truly said, as the noted art historian Werner Spies remarked, "He did not teach painting, but seeing: not art, but the JUERGEN F. STRUBE, Chairman psychology and philosophy of art." BASF Corporation Preface and Acknowledgments Josef Albers was the sum of many parts: painter, A focal point of Bauhaus teaching was its preliminary designer, teacher, theoretician. The first of several course, which was initially developed and taught by Bauhaus faculty members to come to America after Johannes Itten. Albers, who had come to study at the that school closed in 1933, he came to Black Mountain Bauhaus in 1920, was invited by Gropius to teach the College, near Asheville, North Carolina, to assume the preliminary course in 1923. In 1928 he took charge of the course. position of professor of art. There he taught with his wife Anni Albers, the distinguished weaver and herself As a result of the growing Nazi threat in Europe, a a Bauhaus graduate, and developed a curriculum that number of the figures associated with the Bauhaus revolutionized art education in America. emigrated to America and disseminated the principles of the school here: Gropius joined the faculty of In 1919 the architect Walter Gropius consolidated two Harvard University, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy founded the separate schools of arts and crafts in Weimar to create new Bauhaus (now the Institute of Design of the Illinois the Bauhaus. Gropius was convinced of the need to Institute of Technology) and Albers, as we have noted, abolish the distinction between fine and applied arts, went to Black Mountain College. Albers wrote in an idea that had already been put into practice in the German in 1933: English arts and crafts movement and the Deutscher Werkbund. The nucleus of Bauhaus teaching was the . the student should first become aware of form principle that the architect, painter or sculptor should problems in general, and thereby become clear as be soundly trained as a craftsman. To that end, the to his own real inclinations and abilities. In short, school was to be a practical workshop for design with our art instruction attempts first to teach the emphasis placed on the study and use of materials. As student to see in the widest sense: to open his eyes George Heard Hamilton has noted: to the phenomena about him and, most important of all, to open to his own living, being, and doing. The curriculum was based on Formlehre (instruc- In this connection we consider class work in art tion in problems of form) which was arranged in studies necessary because of the common tasks 1 three degrees, moving from Observation (the and mutual criticism. study of nature and analysis of materials) through Representation (descriptive geometiy, techniques For Albers these studies revealed: "On the one hand and constructions, etc.) to Composition (theories the intuitive search for and discovery of form; on the of space, color and design)} other hand the knowledge and application of the fundamental laws of form...." And, as he also noted, the program as visiting critics. The dialogue that Albers "All rendering of form, in fact all creative work, moves encouraged at both schools was enhanced by artists between polarities: intuition and intellect, or possibly whose work often differed radically from his own and between subjectivity and objectivity. Their relative contributed to the fame of each institution. At Yale, as importance continually varies and they always more at Black Mountain, he organized classes in basic design 3 or less overlap." In his own work Albers expressed the and supervised courses in drawing and color. concepts that he set before his students. Albers's impact on painting, sculpture and design both Albers's continuing investigation of artistic absolutes as teacher and theoretician are undisputed. Many of led him to isolate the motif of the square and create his his most renowned students, such as Robert Rauschen- most rigorous format in 1950. The Homage to the berg and Eva Hesse, who became important artists Square series allowed Albers to present color in its developed idioms at odds with Albers's aesthetic. Some infinite variations. As he observed in 1952: students, most notably Richard Anuskiewicz and Julian Stanczak, directly adapted Albers's theories and The painter chooses to articulate with or in color.
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