Josef Albers Quotes

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

The aim of our studies is to prove that color is the most relative means of artistic expression, that we never really perceive what color is physically.

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.

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.

If you don’t do it my way, I suggest you commit suicide.

In Italy the artist is a god. Now if the artist is a god, the scientist is likewise a god.

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.

Any ground subtracts its own hue from the colors which it carries and therefore influences.

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.

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.

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

When we are honest – that’s my saying – if we are honest then we will reveal ourselves. But we do not have to make an effort to be individualistic, different from others.

It was my family that wanted me to be a teacher. That was safe, you see. To be a painter was terrible.

I have taught my students not to apply rules or mechanical ways of seeing.

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

I have invented the Thermometer style.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I prefer to see with closed eyes.