Homage to Albers - 75th Anniversary of "Homage to the Square"
For the 75th anniversary of Josef Albers’s Homage to the Square in release with Superrare curated by 787, I created an oil on canvas painting in homage to Albers and his series. I thought about how Josef Albers conducted his color theory activities for his students and his Homage to the Square series. After reading “Interaction of Color” and completing several tests, I honed in on my thought process of Albers’s color theory and how squares interact within my work.
Color has always been a strong suit of mine—at least, I’d argue that. I have spent a lot of time figuring out my relationship with color and how my feelings and experiences translate into or affect my colors. A couple of years ago, I completed Vasily Kandinsky’s “Concerning the Spiritual in Art,” which deepened my relationship with color. It became spiritual and personal.
Although also a teacher at the Bauhaus, Alber’s thoughts on color differed entirely.
I knew using Albers’s color theory in my work could push me out of my comfort zone. I would have to consider where each color might look best and where it would be on a sliding scale next to other colors. Would you see any noticeable change in hue or opacity based on the location of the next square or color?
Activity nineteen in The Interaction of Color is about the masters of painting. The activity for this chapter is recreating a work from a master in color paper. When speaking about the activity, Albers states, “To honor the masters creatively is to compete with their attitude rather than with their results, to follow an artistic understanding of tradition — that is, to create, not to revive.”
My artwork, to create, not to revive, pays tribute to Albers' creativity, seen in his Homage to the Square series, by igniting my inspiration instead of merely replicating his work. I consider the dynamic relationships among many squares and colors, thinking of how the color, texture, and shape affect how the colors and shapes around it look and feel.