Formulation: Articulation: Portfolio II, Plate 8
Formulation: Articulation: Portfolio II, Plate 8, 1972
Josef Albers (German-born, American, 1888 – 1976)
#1980.0001.0033
Initially trained as a public schoolteacher, Josef Albers joined the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany in 1922 as a student. He soon became a professor at the Bauhaus and taught co-operatively with Paul Klee in the glass workshops. When the Bauhaus was closed in 1933 by the German government, Albers immigrated to the United States with his wife Anni (Fleischmann) Albers, a celebrated textile designer. At that point, Josef and Anni Albers joined the faculty at the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina. In 1950, Josef Albers left Black Mountain to head the Department of Design at Yale University. Of the artists on view in Double Take: Series, Multiples, and Prints, Audrey Flack and Robert Rauschenberg were both pupils of Josef Albers.
The silkscreens on view come from Albers’ 1972 portfolio Formulation: Articulation, which includes images from the series “Homage to the Square” and “Structural Constellations.” Albers initially began the “Homage” series in 1949 to explore the relationships between color, light, and shape. Each work features squares in a multitude of colors superimposed upon each other. The resulting images compare and contrast the infinite possibilities in the relationship of color to form. Albers’ “Structural Constellations” works present parallelograms that can be viewed as two-dimensional renderings of three-dimensional objects. The works on view present a prism fit within a square, constructing the letter Z. Notice that the Z on both images contains the same middle grey. In both of these series, Albers exhibits a controlled and disciplined approach to composition and organization to influence the viewer’s perception.
