Interacting with Albers

摘要

2013 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Interaction with Colour by Josef Albers (1888-1976), one of the most important artist-educators of the twentieth century. In format alone, this first edition is extraordinary, consisting of a cloth-bound slipcase, 46 × 28cm and 15cm thick, weighing almost 9kg, and containing two separate printed folios and more than 80 impeccable silkscreen colour plates in a run of 2,000 copies. Many of these plates have flaps and cut-outs, which allow them to be used to replicate the exercises Albers assigned to his design students. The format, in this way, delivers what lies at the heart of Albers' teaching method: interaction.1 The primary objective of my teaching of colour is a recognition of how colour constantly deceives us. We study experimentally the interaction of colour with light. Also the interdependence with shape, denned by boundaries (distinct and indistinct - connected and separated), and particularly the plastic action (illusion of advancing and receding).