Explore Quotes by Josef Albers

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.

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.

Thus art is not an object, it is an experience.

Easy-to know that diamonds-are precious, Good-to learn that rubies-have depth, But more-to see that pebbles-are miraculous.

I have invented the Thermometer style.

I think Kandinsky and I were very near friends.

Color is like cooking. The cook puts in more or less salt, that's the difference!

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.

I paint the way I spread butter on pumpernickel.

The purpose of art is to re-present nature, not represent it.

Independent of harmony rules, any color 'goes' or 'works' with any other color, presupposing that their quantities are appropriate.

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

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

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.

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.

I was for years in the yellow period, you know.

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

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

One line plus one line results in many meanings.

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.

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