Josef Albers Quotes

Easy-to know that diamonds-are precious, Good-to learn that rubies-have depth, But more-to see that pebbles-are miraculous.

Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.

I prefer to see with closed eyes.

Every perception of color is an illusion, we do not see colors as they really are. In our perception they alter one another.

The purpose of art is to re-present nature, not represent it.

Simultaneous contrast is not just a curious optical phenomenon - it is the very heart of painting.

Thus art is not an object, it is an experience.

Traditionally art is to create and not to revive. To revive: leave that to the historians, who are looking backward.

Learn to see and to feel life; that is, cultivate imagination, because there are still marvels in the world, because life is a mystery and always will be. But be aware of it.

Instead of art I have taught philosophy. Though technique for me is a big word, I never have taught how to paint. All my doing was to make people to see.

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.

On the little money I had collected I lived in Berlin very cheaply, ate very cheaply. And already in 1920 I saved the first salaries I received to go to Munich.

I've handled colour as a man should behave. You may conclude that I consider ethics and aesthetics as one.

When I came from horizontal vertical straight all old stuff then suddenly I go also again in curved lines. And there I submit to changes in the intensity of my hand leading a tool, you see.

I paint the way I spread butter on pumpernickel.

Apprentice is the beginner - the first years you work in a craft in the European sense you are an apprentice. That takes 3 or 4 years. Then you are a journeyman. You can go from one master to another and learn other tricks and other secrets.

Abstraction is real, probably more real than nature.

Ah, the creative process is the same secret in science as it is in art. They are all the same absolutely.

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

And I started with this: I have not painted at all my childhood. In fact, I never painted. But I helped my father who was a house painter and decorative painter. He made stage sets, he made glass paintings, he made everything.

What has been said does not simply belong to us.

I was at the Royal Art School. That was a preparatory school specially for art teachers. You see, it was not so much for the development of artists. But we had there terribly stiff training.

A painter paints because he has no time not to paint.

My father's parents were carpenters. They were also builders partly. They were painters. And several of them were very, active in the theatre and all such nonsense, you know.

It is not so for art in appreciation because art is concerned with human behavior. And science is concerned with the behavior of metal or energy. It depends on what the fashion is. Now today it's energy. It's the same soul behind it. The same soul, you see.

It's the only dish I serve my craziness for color in.

The aim of art is a constant, and a continuous job to reveal visually the attitude of our mentality. And the less we disturb the influence of our mentality the more I believe we come close to the truth.

Whether something 'has color' or not is as hard to define verbally as are such questions as, 'What is music?' or 'What is musical?

Art is revelation instead of information, expression instead of description, creation instead of imitation or repetition. Art is concerned with the HOW, not the WHAT; not with literal content, but with the performance of the factual content. The performance - how it is done - that is the content of art.

Color is like cooking. The cook puts in more or less salt, that's the difference!

I start from experience and read ... always between polarities - loud and not-loud, young and old, spring and winter. If I can make black and white behave together instead of shooting at each other only, I feel proud.

Usually, we think of an apple as being red.
This is not the same red as that of a cherry or tomato.
A lemon is yellow and an orange like that of its name.
Bricks vary from beige to yellow to orange,
and from ochre to brown to deep violet.
Foliage appears in innumerable shades of green.
In all these cases the colors named are surface colors.

In a very different was, distant mountains appear uniformly blue,
no matter whether covered
with green trees or consisting of earth and rocks.
The sun is glaring white in daytime, but it is full red at sunset.
The white ceiling of houses surrounded by lawns or the white-painted
eaves of a roof on a sunny day appear in bright green, which is
reflected from the grass on the ground.
All these cases present film colors.

They appear as a thin, transparent, translucent layer between the eye and an object, independent of the object's surface color.

You see, I have in my teaching - I always say I've done it for a hundred years and have had thousands of students - I have always spoken against just falling onto your knees for so-called accidents, I mean a result you are not responsible for.

The role of art for me is the visualization of attitude, of the human attitude towards life, towards the world.

I was for years in the yellow period, you know.

I think Kandinsky and I were very near friends.

In my basic courses I have always tried to develop discovery and invention which, in my opinion, are the criteria of creativeness.

Calm Down
what happens
happens mostly
without you.

Therefore art means: you have to believe, to have faith, that is, cultivate vision.