Medium: Silkscreen
Edition:
Size: 10 1/4 x 10 1/4 in. (image)
Location: Inside N491 LC
Donor: Donated by E.F. Lindquist; conservation and exhibition generously supported by Professor Emeritus H. Dee and Myrene Hoover.
About the Artwork
Josef Albers was the first living artist to have a one-person show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1971. One year after the show, he published the portfolio set titled Formulation: Articulation in an edition of 1000 printed at Sirocco Screenprints, New Haven, and published by Ives-Sillman in collaboration with Harry N. Abrams, New York. This print was in folio II, folder 8. The portfolio is not organized chronologically. Instead, the order is meant to evoke new relationships and interactions between the colors in the prints. In an artist statement included with the portfolio, Albers wrote:
Although the underlying symmetrical and quasi-concentric order of squares remains the same in all paintings - in proportion and placement - these same squares group or single themselves, connect and separate, in many different ways. In consequence, they move forth and back, in and out, and grow up and down and near and far, enlarged and diminished. All this, to proclaim color autonomy as a means of a plastic organization.
This print of Homage to the Square exemplifies all of the qualities that Albers mentioned. The black, grey, and blue squares seem to telescope inward and outward. The blue appears at once as the background and foreground. The lines, though static, pulse where hues meet, and the eye tries to arrange them in different groupings to cohere. Albers achieves all of this with only color.
Bibliography
Danilowitz, Brenda. The Prints of Josef Albers: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1915-1976. Revised. Manchester and New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, 2010.
Houston, Joe. Optic Nerve: Perceptual Art of the 1960s. Exh. Cat. New York: Merrell & Columbus Museum of Art, 2007.
Rosenthal, T. G. Josef Albers Formulation: Articulation. London: Thames & Hudson, 2006.