1.
I prefer to see with closed eyes.
Josef Albers
2.
Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.
Josef Albers
3.
Every perception of color is an illusion, we do not see colors as they really are. In our perception they alter one another.
Josef Albers
4.
If one says “Red” (the name of a color) and there are 50 people listening, it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.
Josef Albers
5.
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.
Josef Albers
6.
To design is to plan and to organize, to order, to relate and to control. In short it embraces all means of opposing disorder and accident. Therefore it signifies a human need and qualifies man’s thinking and doing.
Josef Albers
7.
Easy-to know that diamonds-are precious, Good-to learn that rubies-have depth, But more-to see that pebbles-are miraculous.
Josef Albers
8.
We never really perceive what color really is, as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art.
Josef Albers
9.
I think art parallels life; it is not a report on nature or on intimate disclosure of inner secrets. Color, in my opinion, behaves like man -- in two distinct ways: first in self-realization and then in the realization of relationships with others.
Josef Albers
10.
Abstraction is real, probably more real than nature.
Josef Albers
11.
Color is like cooking. The cook puts in more or less salt, that's the difference!
Josef Albers
12.
As basic rules of a language must be practiced continually, and therefore are never fixed, so exercises toward distinct color effects never are done or over. New and different cases will be discovered time and again.
Josef Albers
13.
As we do not see squares in nature, I thought that it is man-made. But I have corrected myself. Because squares exist in salt crystals, our daily salt.
Josef Albers
14.
In order to use color effectively it is necessary to recognize that color deceives continually.
Josef Albers
15.
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.
Josef Albers
16.
The purpose of art is to re-present nature, not represent it.
Josef Albers
17.
There is no difference between science and art when it comes to creativeness, productiveness, to come to conclusions and to formulations.
Josef Albers
18.
The role of art for me is the visualization of attitude, of the human attitude towards life, towards the world.
Josef Albers
19.
I've handled colour as a man should behave. You may conclude that I consider ethics and aesthetics as one.
Josef Albers
20.
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.
Josef Albers
21.
Simultaneous contrast is not just a curious optical phenomenon - it is the very heart of painting.
Josef Albers
22.
I do not like to be a prophet. I like better to paint than to predict what the next painters will do. Though I have a feeling that consideration of order is very much in the air.
Josef Albers
23.
Art problems are problems of human relationship.
Josef Albers
24.
Just as the unmusical ear is not competent to judge music, so it is likewise with pictures, whether they are paintings, drawings or photos. Only a sensitive and trained eye gives us the right to judge.
Josef Albers
25.
In my basic courses I have always tried to develop discovery and invention which, in my opinion, are the criteria of creativeness.
Josef Albers
26.
I want color and form to have contradictorily functions.
Josef Albers
27.
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.
Josef Albers
28.
It's the only dish I serve my craziness for color in.
Josef Albers
29.
Repeated similar experiments with adjacent colors will show that any ground subtracts its own hue from colors which it carries and therefore influences.
Josef Albers
30.
Ah, the creative process is the same secret in science as it is in art. They are all the same absolutely.
Josef Albers
31.
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.
Josef Albers
32.
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.
Josef Albers
33.
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.
Josef Albers
34.
If you don't do it my way, I suggest you commit suicide.
Josef Albers
35.
Traditionally art is to create and not to revive. To revive: leave that to the historians, who are looking backward.
Josef Albers
36.
Therefore art means: you have to believe, to have faith, that is, cultivate vision.
Josef Albers
37.
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.
Josef Albers
38.
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.
Josef Albers
39.
I count all the time on resonance. I call on this, you see.
Josef Albers
40.
I have invented the Thermometer style.
Josef Albers
41.
One line plus one line results in many meanings.
Josef Albers
42.
I think Kandinsky and I were very near friends.
Josef Albers
43.
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.
Josef Albers
44.
Whether something 'has color' or not is as hard to define verbally as are such questions as, 'What is music?' or 'What is musical?
Josef Albers
45.
Simultaneous contrast is not just a curious optical phenomenon – it is the very heart of painting. Repeated experiments with adjacent colors will show that any ground subtracts its own hue from the colors which it carries and therefore influences.
Josef Albers
46.
Thus art is not an object, it is an experience.
Josef Albers
47.
It was my family that wanted me to be a teacher. That was safe, you see. To be a painter was terrible.
Josef Albers
48.
Independent of harmony rules, any color 'goes' or 'works' with any other color, presupposing that their quantities are appropriate.
Josef Albers
49.
I have taught my students not to apply rules or mechanical ways of seeing.
Josef Albers
50.
I paint the way I spread butter on pumpernickel.
Josef Albers