Midweek Meditation

http://www.flickr.com/photos/friedel/5221369248/

"If one says 'Red' (the name of a color) and there are 50 people listening, it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds.  And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different."

"In visual perception a color is almost never seen as it really is - as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art."  ~  Josef Albers

Josef Albers was the husband of Anni Albers, whom I quoted last week.  From Wikipedia (February 1, 2012):  "Josef Albers (March 19, 1888 – March 25, 1976) was a German-born American artist and educator whose work, both in Europe and in the United States, formed the basis of some of the most influential and far-reaching art education programs of the 20th century."

Photo of my old textbook, cropped and (almost) straightened.

I knew of Josef Albers long before I knew of his wife Anni.

He wrote one of the few textbooks that I saved from college. 

In the cover illustration (from my now 'old' edition, which is "The revised paperbound edition copyright 1975 by Yale University"), the small squares are the same color, but the lower one appears duller or darker.

From Amazon (February 1, 2012):  "Josef Albers’s Interaction of Color is a masterwork in twentieth-century art education. Conceived as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students, this timeless book presents Albers’s unique ideas of color experimentation in a way that is valuable to specialists as well as to a larger audience.

Originally published by Yale University Press in 1963 as a limited silkscreen edition with 150 color plates, Interaction of Color first appeared in paperback in 1971, featuring ten representative color studies chosen by Albers. The paperback has remained in print ever since and is one of the most influential resources on color for countless readers."