Josef Albers Quotes - Page 2

I want color and form to have contradictorily functions.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I paint the way I spread butter on pumpernickel.

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

What has been said does not simply belong to us.

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

Repeated similar experiments with adjacent colors will show that any ground subtracts its own hue from colors which it carries and therefore influences.

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

Art is concerned with the HOW and not the WHAT.

Art problems are problems of human relationship.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

We never really perceive what color is physically!

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.