Joseph Albers: To Open Eyes

by Horowitz, Frederick A.; Danilowitz, Brenda

• ISBN13: 9780714845999
• ISBN10: 071484599X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-11-07
• Publisher: Phaidon Press

Summary

The First Comprehensive Book to Examine the Teaching Methodsof the Artist Renowned for theHomage to the Square Paintings.Josef Albers (1888-1976) has long been admired for his progressive visionas an artist who blurred distinctions between fine and applied art, butrarely has his work as a teacher been examined in detail.The German-bornartist was a remarkable classroom performer whose colorful language, wit,and dramatic flair held his students spellbound and turned his lessons intohigh adventure.Whether at the Bauhaus in prewar Germany, Black MountainCollege in rural North Carolina during the 1930s and 1940s, or at Yale inthe 1950s, Albers was driven by one thing--the desire to open his students'eyes to a different way of perceiving art and, ultimately, life.JOSEF ALBERS: TO OPEN EYES by Frederick A. Horowitz and Brenda Danilowitz,is the first book to focus on how the legendary artist Josef Albersinfluenced generations of artists, architects, and designers, includingRobert Mangold, Robert Rauschenberg, Donald Judd, Bertrand Goldberg, andTom Geismar, through his work and legacy as an educator.Marking the 30thanniversary of Albers's death, the book examines his life and teachingmethods, and reveals his philosophies on art, life, and the nature ofperception based on first-hand accounts of more than 175 students andcolleagues spanning more than 40 years.The book will coincide with amajor exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art which will run fromNovember 2, 2006- January 21, 2007.JOSEF ALBERS: TO OPEN EYES takes the reader through Albers's life inteaching.He began his career in 1923, when Walter Gropius invited him tojoin the faculty of the Bauhaus in Germany, where he quickly replaced theschool's standard course curriculum with his own innovative methods.Aftermoving to the United States in 1933, he and his wife Anni became foundingmembers and teachers at the experimental start-up BlackMountain College.In 1950, he was appointed to head Yale's newlyrestructured Department of Design and remained there until he retired in1958.Although he is widely perceived as a strong-minded theoretician, as thisbook reveals, Albers opposed rigid dogma and encouraged his students todevelop lively and original solutions to his many and varied designexercises.On their first day in his classroom, Albers's students wereinformed that his goal was to educate their eyes and that he was going toteach them how to think and to see--an agenda belied by the somewhatprosaic course names "Basic Drawing" and "Basic Design" and "Color."With energy and flair, Danilowitz and Horowitz have charted Albers'sworld-changing role as a teacher.Through their archival research oforiginal correspondence, documents, student course notes, and student workproduced in his courses, and their interviews of former students,colleagues, and associates of Albers, they reveal the way that Albers'sideas on education and his complex personality have made an indelibleimprint in the lives and work of artists all over the world.This bookprovides not only a compelling study of a key figure of 20th century art,but also ponders what constitutes art and how it is made and taught.

Author Biography

Brenda Danilowtiz is the chief curator of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Bethany, Connecticut.