Josef Albers, Late Modernism, and Pedagogic Form

225 Pages·2022·23.264 MB·English

by  Jeffrey Saletnik

Josef Albers,
lAte ModernisM, And
PedAgogic forM

Jeffrey Saletnik the University of chicAgo Press
chicAgo And london
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2022 by The University of Chicago
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ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 69917- 2 (cloth)
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DOI: https:// doi .org /10 .7208 /chicago /9780226819396 .001 .0001
This publication is made possible in part by the Alexander von Humboldt
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Saletnik, Jeffrey, author.
Title: Josef Albers, late modernism, and pedagogic form / Jeffrey Saletnik.
Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2022. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021054315 | ISBN 9780226699172 (cloth) |
ISBN 9780226819396 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Albers, Josef. | Albers, Josef—Influence. | Artists as teachers. |
Art—Study and teaching—History—20th century. | Form (Aesthetics)—Study
and teaching—History—20th century. | Art, Modern—20th century—History. |
Modernism (Art)
Classification: LCC N6888.A5 S25 2022 | DDC 709.04—dc23/eng/20211231
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021054315
 ∞ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992
(Permanence of Paper).
Introduction: “Bye, bye, Bauhaus” 1
a Linear Constructions 15
1 From Object to Process: On Albers’s
Pedagogic Forms 27
Learning by Doing 28
Progressive Education 32
Educating Albers 38
Pedagogic Form 47
b Photography 67
2 Fold/Manifold: On Eva Hesse and Albers 81
Lightweight and Weighted Down 84
Folding and Unfolding 99
c Painting 119
3 Color Aid: On Richard Serra and Albers 127
Working Methods 130
Disciplined Disorientation 141
Epilogue: Playtime 155
Acknowledgments 157
Notes 161
Selected Bibliography 199
Image Credits 212
Index 213

“bye, bye, bAUhAUs”
In the late 1960s proponents of the Bauhaus mounted a touring exhibition
to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the design school’s founding. 50 Years
Bauhaus, presented at venues in Stuttgart, London, Paris, Toronto, Chicago,
Pasadena, Tokyo, and Buenos Aires between 1968 and 1971, was intended to
“[trace] the history of the Bauhaus and [show] how the teachings of the Bau-
haus are being perpetuated.”1 To the astonishment of Walter Gropius and
the exhibition’s principal organizer, Ludwig Grote, Josef Albers refused to
participate. He rebuffed requests to lend work and other materials to the
exhibition and went so far as to write to select museums asking that they
too deny loan requests for works by him in their collections.2 He referred
to his nonparticipation as a “protest.”3 Albers objected to what he saw as
the distortion of the school’s history in service of “Bauhaus propaganda.”4
More to the point, he was displeased both by the portrayal of his own
position in accounts of the school and by the notion that his work and
teaching since emigrating to the United States in 1933 were derivative of
the Bauhaus.5 His competing desires—t o be acknowledged as a vital pres-
ence at the Bauhaus, and for his current practice to be viewed apart from
the school— are clear in his response to an invitation to participate in a
symposium planned to coincide with the Chicago installation of 50 Years
Bauhaus. “As is well known,” Anni Albers wrote the organizers, “Josef Al-
bers, from the very start of the 50 year program did not wish to be involved
in it.” Nonetheless, she continued, “We are wondering why the Chicago
[exhibition] announcement leaves out [Albers’s] name and thus adds to
the distortion that for years has plagued the Bauhaus history.”6
Among the reasons for these dueling desires was Albers’s determina-
tion to have his work and teaching appreciated as relevant to contempo-
rary artistic practice in the late 1960s and early 1970s—w hich, as this book
elaborates, it certainly was.7 Albers’s life spanned the entire historical arc
of modernism. Having taught at the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College,
and Yale University, he partook in the development of modernist tropes
on both sides of the Atlantic and witnessed their decline.8 Yet, despite
Albers’s far-r eaching career, his close association with perceptual abstrac-
tion and the modernist aesthetics and educational traditions affiliated
with the Bauhaus have occluded his importance to artists like Eva Hesse
2 and Richard Serra. Hesse, Serra, and many lesser- known artists who had
experienced Albers’s curriculum faced the challenge of making art in mod-
ernism’s wake—a s the terms of discourse used to contextualize ever more
broadly defined artistic practices shifted and as learning structures were
reconfigured in light of postmodern educational thought.
For his part, Albers remained a steadfast abstract modernist throughout
his career, avoiding personal expression and explicit reference to content
beyond that generated by a work’s form. Indeed, once he determined—
nearly two decades after departing the Bauhaus— that a composition of
three or four nested squares was best suited for demonstrating the inter-
action of color, he used this format almost exclusively for the rest of his
life, in his Homage to the Square series of over two thousand paintings
and prints (fig. 0.1). He was similarly consistent in examining how various
combinations of lines produced destabilizing visual effects in his linear
constructions, a series of drawings, engravings, and prints that also num-
ber in the thousands (fig. 0.2). Albers’s post-B auhaus pedagogy—w hich
Fig. 0.1. Josef Albers,
Homage to the Square,
1952. Oil on Masonite,
40.6 × 40.6 cm. Private
collection. Image courtesy
the Josef and Anni Albers
Foundation. © The Josef
and Anni Albers Founda-
tion/Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York.
introdUction
included material study (fig. 0.3), matière (haptic collage; fig. 0.4), color Fig. 0.2. Josef Albers,
study (fig. 0.5), drawing (fig. 0.6), and painting—f unctioned similarly inso- Structural Constellation
IV, ca. 1955– 1960. Ink on
far as its exercises provided opportunities for productive disorientation as
paper, 45.7 × 58.4 cm. Josef
students created (or attempted to resolve) unstable visual circumstances
and Anni Albers Founda-
through measured material inquiry. Yet, although obsessive in its regular- tion, 1976.3.363. © The
ity, Albers’s practice was positioned erratically in critical discourse.9 And Josef and Anni Albers
Foundation/Artists Rights
the Bauhaus dogged the artist- educator. Clement Greenberg (in 1949) con-
Society (ARS), New York.
sidered Albers to be doctrinaire, a “victim of Bauhaus modernism” and
thus an outlier to his own modernist doctrine; the school lay in wait as
Albers belatedly found popular recognition in the 1960s.10
William C. Seitz made Albers central to his 1965 exhibition The Respon-
sive Eye, in which he prioritized the optical power of the artist’s practice,
referring to him as a “master of perceptual abstraction” and devoting
one room— contiguous to but separate from the hang—t o Albers’s work.
Albers, Victor Vasarely, and, although not exhibited, Giacomo Balla, Kazi-
mir Malevich, and Piet Mondrian, were cast as old masters, in which role
they legitimized the current trends Seitz observed in perceptual art.11 For
Seitz, the absence of personal marks on the surfaces of works shown in
The Responsive Eye, as well as the new materials (like plastics) involved
“bye, bye, bAUhAUs”
Fig. 0.3. Material studies
(paper, bent; metal, cut),
Bauhaus, ca. 1925– 1933.
Photographer unknown.
Gelatin silver print, 12.1
× 16.3 cm. Courtesy the
Josef and Anni Albers
Foundation, 1976.34.133.
Fig. 0.4. Matière (fabric,
feathers, rag lichen), Black
Mountain College, ca.
1940. Photographic nega-
tive by Josef Albers. Josef
and Anni Albers Founda-
tion, 1976.19.3923. © The
Josef and Anni Albers
Foundation/Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York.