Interaction of Color: Revised and Expanded Edition

Product Details

• ISBN13: 9780300115956
• Train: NEW
• Notes: Sort New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Description

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Customer Reviews

An excellent guide to practical color application
Josef Albers revolutionized how we approach the application of color in everything from fine art to architecture. In this book he walks you through lessons in theory and practical exercises he used to train students when he was teaching at Yale University. He gives well thought out examples and outlines exercises that can be used to fine tune your ability to see the more subtle nuances within the color spectrum and how important context affects our perceptions of color.

Most of the exercises use in the book require various shades and tints of colored paper. I found using the larger paint swatches found at the local hardware store worked quite well and best of all they're free.

2010-02-23 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Best Color Book I have ever read
This is a really classic book. I can only say buy it & don't lend it out. Its a collector's item to me. Once you read it and try it you will have a new way of seeing everything in your environment. A must for anyone wanting to dicover the true meaning of color. I can't say enough about the mind opening abilities that this book has to offer. Buy it quick. If you do follow the instructions in this book you will be very amazed at how your knowledge of art will change. A one of a kind book. I had the opportunity to see the original book, made by Albers students. This is a taste of genius from a Master.

2009-03-20 (Mississippi) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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Albers,
Is a little weird how the author presents his analysis, how he propose the reader should follow practising, images are good enough, it is a good book.

2008-10-24 (Buenos Aires - Argentina) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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Old news
"The Interaction of Color" was a great "art piece" for its time, but is now seen by most people who know more about color than Albers, as an explication of the obvious. It would be better for readers interested in color theory and practice to start mixing their own paints together to find out for themselves how their colors interact. And, we should all realize that each different kind of paint makes for unique color interactions.

This book is an historical artifact worth owning, but not using.

Mark Gottsegen
"The Painter's Handbook" and

2008-10-21 | Mark (Climax, NC USA) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 1

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Good for exploration
Albers provides a series of explorations and experiments for the reader to follow. If you have the resources to perform the experiments as directed, this will probably be a wonderful book. I did not, so I cannot evaluate that aspect.

While not as comprehensive as some other books on color theory, Albers scores points by covering several subjects that are not as well represented in those other books.

Definitely recommended for anyone looking to build a comprehensive library on color theory.

2008-10-08 (Rochester, NY, USA) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 4

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Josef Albers: Homage to the Square

Product Details

• Notes: Trade-mark New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Accustom: NEW
• ISBN13: 9788492480388

Description

Influential teacher, writer, painter and color theorist Josef Albers was the first Bauhaus student to be asked to join the faculty. By 1933, when the Nazis forced the school to close, Albers had become one of its best-known artists and teachers. Having migrated with his wife Anni to the U.S., where he taught at Black Mountain College and at Yale, Albers began to experiment with the optical effects of simple color combinations. The experimentation blossomed into a lifelong obsession that would culminate in his best-known series of paintings, Homage to the Square, in which he painted several differently-colored squares within larger squares in order to illustrate his theory that alterations in environment, shape and light would produce changes in color. This edition contains impeccable reproductions of Albers' famous series, which beautifully illustrate the artist's primary thesis, that the discrepancy between visual information received by the retina and what the mind perceives proves that this information is not intrinsic to color itself, but is dependent on its relationship with its surroundings.

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Interaction of Color: New Complete Edition

Description

One of the most influential books on colour ever published, Josef Albers' "Interaction of Color" is a masterwork. Originally issued in 1963 as a limited-edition set of commentary and 150 silkscreened colour plates, the book introduced generations of students, artists, designers, and collectors to Albers' unique approach to complex principles. While the original publication has long been out of print, this beautiful new edition now brings Interaction back into classrooms, studios, and on to bookshelves, where it will find an eager new audience. Lavishly produced as a two-volume slipcased set, this book replicates Albers' revolutionary exercises, explaining concepts such as colour relativity and vibrating and vanishing boundaries through the use of colour, shape, die-cut forms, and movable flaps that illustrate his astonishing demonstrations of the changing and relative nature of colour. Also included for the first time are new studies from the Albers archive, produced by the artist's students in the early 1960s. A celebration of Albers' legendary achievements, this beautiful publication is an essential addition to any serious art library.

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Customer Reviews

beware of bad copies
This review is not about the value of the work-itself of Josef Albers. What I 'm going to say concerns the particular edition. When I first received the package, I was delighted by the good printing quality of the first book with the plates, but unfortunately the second text-book was a bad copy with 8 pages double printed.
I paid half the price of the book to send it back (I live in Greece) for replacement. Now, I have just received a new copy and I have found that while the text-book seems ok, the printing quality of the plates of the first book is not as good as in the one I have returned, in fact it is much inferior with apparent crosscoverings and mudy washes on the edges of colors. I feel frustrated and I don't even khow if I have a poor quality copy or a bad copy, because I don't have a prototype to compare.

2010-02-22 | Lazaros (Thessaloniki, Greece) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 1

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Stunning collectors' edition
This is an unbelieveably gorgeous and lavish edition of Josef Albers's original book. Movable flaps within the color plates lift up to show the magic of Albers's legendary exercises: how the same color appearing on two different backgrounds can look so different, and vice versa. A real collectors' item for people who love fine art publications.

2009-12-15 | Helpful Votes: 14 | Rating: 5

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Interaction of Color

Description

Great book by Modern Abstract artist Josef Albers focusing on his color theory and ideas. 12 color plates with color combinations and interactions. Unabridged text and selected plates, revised edition. Softcover. 81 pages. Measures 6 by 8 inches. Interesting book.

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Customer Reviews

a seminal study of color for artists and printers
This study will be of equal interest to scientists and artists. Although the author invites students to recreate his studies using colored paper scavenged from various sources, those interested in human vision and optical effects may learn much just by reading. Topics include:
visual memory
the relativity of color
light intensity, darkness
gradation studies
subtraction of color
color deception, after-image
transparence and space-illusion
the Bezold effect
color juxtaposition
film color and volume colorthe Weber-Fechner Law
tenerature and humidity in color
vibrating and vanishing boundaries, etc.
Explanation of color terms

2010-03-02 (MidAtlantic) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Josef Albers: Formulation: Articulation

Description

A sumptuously produced introduction to the ideas and methods of one of the most influential artists and theorists of the twentieth century.

First issued in 1972 as a limited edition set of prints, Formulation: Articulation is being published in book form for the first time. Josef Albers drew on over forty years' work in a variety of media—woodcuts, sandblasted glass pictures, and oil paintings—for these poetic explorations of color and form. Created just four years before his death in 1976, the images can be seen as the summation of Albers's creative life.

Albers was a student and a teacher at the Bauhaus from 1920 to 1933, escaped to America and taught at Black Mountain College until 1949, and was chairman of the Department of Design at Yale University until 1958. As both artist and teacher he influenced innumerable artists, including Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Robert Rauschenberg. Albers's seminal text, Interaction of Color (1963), which was translated into eight languages, affected art teaching all over the world.

This book embodies all the elements of Albers's lifetime preoccupation with abstraction, color, and perception. He draws the viewer into a dynamic relationship with his work, showing how color can have deceptive and unpredictable effects, depending on how it interacts with other colors. The order of the 127 illustrations was carefully chosen by Albers so that they can be examined and appreciated for their visual interaction or as beautiful works of art in their own right. They appear alone on the page, in pairs, or sometimes four together.

The accompanying text includes key passages from Albers's own writings, printed on special foldout sections, and the introduction by noted critic T. G. Rosenthal includes comparative and contextual illustrations. 150 illustrations, 127 in color.

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Customer Reviews

Editor is right-on with his review
Beauitful book and color theory of Albers is explained very well. Color plates are wonderful. I am not gonna talk about his color theory - who would listen? Read the book. I wish, and was hoping, that their would be more of a bio about Albers but that was not the point of this wonderful book.

2009-02-18 | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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Good quality reproductions
Nice coffee table book for sure. Inspirational for geometric abstract artists, even vector artists and illustrators. Great for color fans, obviously, as Albers was one of the color masters. Would not pay full price.

2007-12-15 | Marc (Illinois USA) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 4

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Josef Albers: To Open Eyes

Description

Josef Albers (1888-1976) has long been admired for his progressive vision as an artist and designer who blurred distinctions between fine and applied art, but rarely has his influence as a teacher been examined with such depth and detail. The German-born artist/educator was a remarkable classroom performer whose colorful language, wit, and dramatic flair held his students spellbound and turned his lessons into high adventure. Whether at the Bauhaus in prewar Germany, Black Mountain College in rural North Carolina during the 1930s and 1940s, or at Yale in the 1950s, Albers-the-teacher was driven by one thing: the desire to open his students' eyes to a different way of perceiving art and, ultimately, life.The son of a house painter and decorator in Germany's northwest Ruhr region, Albers grew up surrounded by artisans and learned at an early age to paint, cut stone, and craft wood. Although his ambition had always been to become an artist, Albers entered teacher's training college at his father's insistence and spent his first professional year teaching six- to fourteen-year-olds in a single-classroom school. Later experience at the Koniglichen Kunstschule in Berlin's rough-and-tumble Alexanderplatz neighborhood and exposure to the city's hothouse cultural atmosphere inspired the young Albers to merge his love for art and education - a decision that would have an impact on generations of artists to come in both Europe and the United States."Josef Albers: To Open Eyes" takes the reader through Albers' life in teaching - from his first years at the pioneering but politically fraught Bauhaus; to his 1933 emigration to the United States, where he and his wife Anni became founding members and teachers at the experimental start-up Black Mountain College; and again to his 1950 appointment to head up Yale University's newly restructured Department of Design. Throughout his 40 years in education, Albers influenced everyone he encountered not, as one former student says, as a 'tour guide of the world of art, but rather as a living embodiment of that world'.

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Customer Reviews

Josef Albers: To Open Eyes
Really enjoy the detail background information on Josef Albers's life path and teaching methods. His determination and discipline not to give in and stay true to his path not only in teaching, but lifestyle. Not to mention the insight that is given by Anni Albers comments and quotes. I am a big fan of Bauhaus history and it has given me another perspective of those years.

2010-01-28 (Maryland) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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If you are interested in color, art instruction, or Bauhaus/Black Mountain, you need to have this book.
I purchased this book when it was first published--and it has taken me a while to write a review. One reason is this book is hard to classify. "With Open Eyes" takes many perspectives on the teachings of Josef Albers, providing historical, artistic, as well as the theoretical perspectives on what is a very complex topic, color and art instruction. Just like Albers' other seminal work, "Interaction of Color", each time I read "To Open Eyes", I find something new and compelling to dwell upon--to learn. This is also probably the only book ever published that provided a first hand account of the Albers' teachings at Black Mountain--which alone is a huge contribution to art history and the study of color and artistic pursuits.

Beyond the content, Phaidon has gone to great lengths to publish a high quality book. The quality of the reproduction and text are very good--it will make a nice addition to any collection of monographs or art books.

As you've probably noticed, all the previous reviewers have given it "five stars"--so I don't need to tell you it is worth buying this book. But, this book is a must have for any artist or art instuctor. If you are an artist looking to improve your work, buy it with "Interaction of Color" and you will thank yourself later.

all the best, Jerry
[...]

2009-04-17 | sixtyminuteartist.blogspot.com (Washington, DC) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Enlarge your sensory world - a must for all artists
This is a book about color not history! This book is about a profound and universal approach to art, color, teaching and ultimately life. There is a thread of integrity, passion and experimentation running through all of Josef Albers' paintings, drawings, designs and teaching. Sometimes by learning about how he taught we gain more profound access to his paintings. Other times, by looking at his paintings we find we want to learn about how he approached teaching and how he achieved such insight into both the world at large and the world of color. Regardless of how you enter Josef's world or come under Josef's influence, the benefits are the same: an irrevocable expansion and enrichment of one's own sensory world. I could go on at length as to how curious it is that Albers is frequently misunderstood as having been someone cool and controlling instead of the playful, spontaneous, generous and flexible man described in "To Open Eyes". But what you need to know is how significant this book is. There are thousands of books that offer dogma and theory for you to advance your own work or teaching. There really has never been a book like "To Open Eyes" which clarifies the Albers story while simultaneously imparting Josef's most important lessons about color and seeing. If you could have only one book in your studio, this would be it.

2008-10-22 | artist (California) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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An important companion for Interaction of Color
Horowitz and Danilowitz have written and assembled a remarkable and generous companion to the famous, Interaction of Color. One of the strongest criticisms of the Interaction of Color is that without the plates found in the original 1963 edition Albers' writing and ideas are hard to access. "To Open Eyes" solves this problem and it is the most enjoyable and important book published on color since the original I of C. Everyone who works with color should own this book!

2008-10-16 | art book buyer (California) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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Outstanding Description of the Methods of A Superlative Art Teacher
Josef Albers: To Open Eyes by Frederick A. Horowitz and Brenda Danilowitz, is a beautiful, magnificent book about this internationally eminent artist, teacher of art, and theorist of design and color. It simply could not be better.

Brenda Danilowitz, Chief Curator of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Bethany, Connecticut, writes about the biography of Albers, 64 pages, while Frederick A. Horowitz, a former student of Albers at Yale, who taught a The University of Michigan School of Art & Design in Ann Arbor and at Washtenaw Community College, devotes 181 pages to Albers as teacher of design, drawing, color and painting. An additional 34 pages cover Notes, Bibliography, Sources, Illustrations and Index. To find out what made Albers such a unique and revered teacher Frederick Horowitz interviewed a total of 160 students at Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, Yale and Harvard as well as 9 of his professional colleagues.

Albers was first a student and then a member of the faculty of the original Bauhaus in Germany. When Hitler took over Germany in 1933 and the faculty, led by Mies van der Rohe, closed the Bauhaus, Albers came to the U.S. to teach, first at Black Mountain College in North Carolina and then, beginning in 1950, at Yale as Head of the Department of Design. By 1962 Yale University awarded him an honorary Doctorate at the same time she similarly honored President John F. Kennedy and former Secretary of State Dean Acheson.

Albers experimented with color relationships in the form of nested squares of color. His great dedication resulted in a retrospective exhibition of his oeuvre at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, an honor only rarely given to a living artist. Another retrospective was organized in 1988 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

At Yale all first-year graduate students in architecture, undergraduates majoring in architecture and design, and all students in design took Albers' courses in color and in drawing, while his basic design course was meant for undergraduates majoring in architecture.

Albers had a wide influence on generations of artists, architecture and design. The book makes it eminently clear why Albers was as influential a teacher as he was and why his courses and theories became the basis of art teaching all over the United States.

The text of this truly remarkable book is very informative and well written. The illustrations are superlative, carefully chosen and in many instances unique, not available anywhere else since they come from the Albers Foundation. I counted 284 illustrations, 103 in color.

By describing the life and artful work of Josef Albers this book demonstrates to teachers and lovers of art at all levels how to impart a life-long desire to experiment with fundamental principles of art and with novel materials to create new objects of art.

2007-02-08 (New Haven, CT) | Helpful Votes: 8 | Rating: 5

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