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I–S j is a late example of his Homage to the Square series begun twenty-four years earlier. The smallest square is the most intense and is in a yellow-tinted shade of green surrounded by a larger teal-green square, with proportionally more showing at the top than the bottom. Around it is a charcoal-gray square similarly proportioned, and it is encased by a black square. The lack of four-sided symmetry was intentional. The screenprint is signed in the lower right with Albers’s usual monogram, an elongated “A,” followed by ’73, and in the lower right appears the chop mark for Ives-Silliman, the concern that published the print. Norman Ives and Sewell Sillman were former students of Albers’s from Black Mountain who followed their mentor to Yale.
The title reflects Albers’s methodical approach to his Homage to the Square pieces. Just as he noted on the back of the paintings the colors he used, the prints were also systematically documented, as he saw them all as part of an investigation of how colors change according to their placement, neighboring colors, their tone, and intensity. In I–S j one issue is whether the bright green square is read as receding or advancing. As Albers explained,
"Although the color is uniformly flat from a technical point of view and extends evenly from boundary to boundary, it produces an effect of depth as the colors arrange themselves in or on the underlying screen:
Through infinity and contrast
They combine and separate
—with regard to tone as well as light—
in groups of many kinds." [1]
Having usually painted his Homage to the Square compositions on Masonite with a palette knife and without tape, Albers reveled in the exactness and flatness of screenprints, and in the multiple colored inks available to him. Screenprints were also well suited to his penchant for highly simplified forms and repeated units. The mechanical nature of screenprints was ideal for his version of abstract art, about which he declared: “Abstracting is the essential function of the Human Spirit. Abstract Art is the purest art: it strives most intensely toward the spiritual. Abstract Art is Art in its beginning and is the Art of the Future.” [2]
Notes:
[1] Albers, quoted in Eugen Gomringer, et al., Josef Albers: His Work as a Contribution to Visual Articulation in the Twentieth Century (New York: George Wittenborn, 1968), 137.
[2] Albers, “Why I favor Abstract Art,” 4 Painters: Albers, Dreier, Drewes, Kelpe (Chicago, IL: Arts Club, 1936), quoted in Mary Emma Harris, The Arts at Black Mountain College (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 13.
ProvenanceTo 1983
Barbara B. Millhouse, New York, NY and Winston-Salem, NC. [1]
From 1983
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Barbara B. Millhouse on December 29, 1983. [2]
Notes:
[1] Deed of Gift, object file.
[2] See note 1.
Exhibition History1976
Twentieth Century American Print Collection opening
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (12/3/1976)
2023
Black Mountain College: Seedbed of American Art
Reynolda House Museum of American Art (3/10/2023-6/25/2023)
Published ReferencesFaber, David L., Daniel M. Mendelowitz, and Duane A. Wakeham. A Guide to Drawing. 7th ed. Wadsworth Publishing, 2006.
Faber, David L. and Daniel M. Mendelowitz. A Guide to Drawing. 8th ed. Wadsworth Publishing, 2011.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 178, 179, 190
DepartmentAmerican Art
I-S j
Artist
Josef Albers
(1888 - 1976)
Date1973
Mediumscreenprint in four colors
DimensionsFrame: 35 1/4 x 45 1/4 in. (89.5 x 114.9 cm)
Image: 25 1/8 x 25 1/8 in. (63.8 x 63.8 cm)
Paper: 30 x 39 7/8 in. (76.2 x 101.3 cm)
SignedA (monogram) '73
Credit LineGift of Barbara B. Millhouse
Copyright© 2013 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object number1983.2.22
DescriptionFor Josef Albers, printmaking provided a medium that was technically demanding and one that allowed him to leave no trace of his hand, in direct contrast to many other artists of his time. He made his first prints while a student in his mid-twenties; they were stylistically and thematically similar to the German Expressionists. Following his departure from the Bauhaus and while at Black Mountain College, he used relief prints and lithography to further his investigations in visual perception. After his retirement from Yale University, he was thoroughly engaged in printmaking as an alternative to painting, and enjoyed the idea that through prints his work was accessible to larger audiences.I–S j is a late example of his Homage to the Square series begun twenty-four years earlier. The smallest square is the most intense and is in a yellow-tinted shade of green surrounded by a larger teal-green square, with proportionally more showing at the top than the bottom. Around it is a charcoal-gray square similarly proportioned, and it is encased by a black square. The lack of four-sided symmetry was intentional. The screenprint is signed in the lower right with Albers’s usual monogram, an elongated “A,” followed by ’73, and in the lower right appears the chop mark for Ives-Silliman, the concern that published the print. Norman Ives and Sewell Sillman were former students of Albers’s from Black Mountain who followed their mentor to Yale.
The title reflects Albers’s methodical approach to his Homage to the Square pieces. Just as he noted on the back of the paintings the colors he used, the prints were also systematically documented, as he saw them all as part of an investigation of how colors change according to their placement, neighboring colors, their tone, and intensity. In I–S j one issue is whether the bright green square is read as receding or advancing. As Albers explained,
"Although the color is uniformly flat from a technical point of view and extends evenly from boundary to boundary, it produces an effect of depth as the colors arrange themselves in or on the underlying screen:
Through infinity and contrast
They combine and separate
—with regard to tone as well as light—
in groups of many kinds." [1]
Having usually painted his Homage to the Square compositions on Masonite with a palette knife and without tape, Albers reveled in the exactness and flatness of screenprints, and in the multiple colored inks available to him. Screenprints were also well suited to his penchant for highly simplified forms and repeated units. The mechanical nature of screenprints was ideal for his version of abstract art, about which he declared: “Abstracting is the essential function of the Human Spirit. Abstract Art is the purest art: it strives most intensely toward the spiritual. Abstract Art is Art in its beginning and is the Art of the Future.” [2]
Notes:
[1] Albers, quoted in Eugen Gomringer, et al., Josef Albers: His Work as a Contribution to Visual Articulation in the Twentieth Century (New York: George Wittenborn, 1968), 137.
[2] Albers, “Why I favor Abstract Art,” 4 Painters: Albers, Dreier, Drewes, Kelpe (Chicago, IL: Arts Club, 1936), quoted in Mary Emma Harris, The Arts at Black Mountain College (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 13.
ProvenanceTo 1983
Barbara B. Millhouse, New York, NY and Winston-Salem, NC. [1]
From 1983
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Barbara B. Millhouse on December 29, 1983. [2]
Notes:
[1] Deed of Gift, object file.
[2] See note 1.
Exhibition History1976
Twentieth Century American Print Collection opening
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (12/3/1976)
2023
Black Mountain College: Seedbed of American Art
Reynolda House Museum of American Art (3/10/2023-6/25/2023)
Published ReferencesFaber, David L., Daniel M. Mendelowitz, and Duane A. Wakeham. A Guide to Drawing. 7th ed. Wadsworth Publishing, 2006.
Faber, David L. and Daniel M. Mendelowitz. A Guide to Drawing. 8th ed. Wadsworth Publishing, 2011.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 178, 179, 190
Status
Not on viewCollections