Artist, teacher, and color theorist Josef Albers spent decades refining his concepts of color relationships and form. Formulation: Articulation, published after his retirement from the art department at Yale University, is a compendium of Albers’s research. Albers considered this book to be a work of art in its own right—not purely didactic. In his words, “Our aim is not a retrospective report; the book aims at Art itself, meaning: no retrospective in the usual sense. These are visual realizations, here presented outspoken in silkscreen.” Notice how the proximity of the colors impacts our vision, and the impact of each color and design on the viewer. Which color relationship best fits your mood today? Click through to compare Albers’s cool, shimmering greens with smoldering reds!
—Mary Weaver Chapin, Curator of Prints and Drawings
Josef Albers (American, born Germany, 1888–1976), Formulation: Articulation I, 1972, Volume 1 of 2; screenprints on paper, housed in a cloth-lined portfolio case. Gift of The Josef Albers Foundation, Inc., 80.72.1
