Josef Albers: Life and Work

by Charles Darwent

Overview

The first full-scale biography of the great 20th-century artist, craftsman, and thinker Josef Albers, whose influence is still felt today. 

Drawing on extensive unpublished archival writings, documents, and illustrations, this is the first full-scale biography of one of the 20th-century’s great artists.

In his accessible study of the “whole” Albers, Charles Darwent combats the fables while telling the fascinating story of an artist, friend, and intellectual.

Among Albers’s unpublished papers are letters from friends John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra, and Eva Hesse, as well as fans and collectors ranging from the composer Virgil Thomson to the cartoonist Saul Steinberg. If his network of influence was surprisingly wide, so too, were his interests. He started life at the Bauhaus as a glass-maker and went on to create fonts, to run their famous wallpaper workshop, and to make furniture whose designs are still in production eighty years later. He pioneered the study of color at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and chaired the design department at Yale University. While books have been written about Albers for specialist audiences, this new volume fulfills the clear need for a more general study. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780500519103
Publisher:	Thames & Hudson
Publication date:	11/20/2018
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 9.70(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Charles Darwent is a writer and regular contributor to The Guardian, the Art Newspaper, Apollo, and the Times Literary Supplement and was the Independent on Sunday’s chief art critic from 1999 to 2013. His biography Josef Albers: Life and Work was described by Tate Modern director Frances Morris as “lively, lucid, compelling and revealing.”

Table of Contents

Preface 13

Introduction: Homages to the Square 17

1 Am Anfang 45

2 The World Outside: Berlin and Munich 71

3 A Man of Glass: Weimar 117

4 Student to Meister: Dessau and Berlin 151

5 Amerika: Black Mountain College 193

6 Ends and Beginnings: Yale 231

7 That Which Should Accompany Old Age 235

Notes 305

Select Bibliography 326

Collections 327

Exhibitions 328

Picture List 329

Index 330

Editorial Reviews

"A meticulously researched, elegantly written, and generously illustrated biography of an artist whose personality was as enigmatic as his art… Darwent deftly characterizes the outsized egos and philosophical and petty rivalries that roiled the Bauhaus… An authoritative and sensitive portrait of a modern master."— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A gripping biography of a German artist unjustly pigeonholed as the creator of interminable variations of pictures of squares… Darwent draws extensively on Albers’s previously unpublished writings and drawings to fully capture the artist’s life… Sympathetic and generously illustrated."— Publishers Weekly

"Charles Darwent's biography gives the German-born American artist and teacher his due [and] makes a strong case for an artist who was not as recognized as fellow Bauhaus teachers Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Lyonel Feininger… Darwent emphasizes the poetic yearning that hides within Albers's scientific-seeming experiments, most notably in his "Homage to the Square" paintings… A gruff yet caring teacher, a ladies' man and a daily Mass-going Catholic, both jealous of and generous with his peers, Albers steps convincingly from these pages."— The Washington Post

From the Publisher

★ 2018-06-27
Best known for his Homage to the Square paintings, Josef Albers (1888-1976) investigated clashing, merging, vibrating contours between colors.Art critic and reviewer Darwent (Mondrian in London: How British Art Nearly Became Modern, 2012, etc.) offers a meticulously researched, elegantly written, and generously illustrated biography of an artist whose personality was as enigmatic as his art. The German-born Albers, son of a house painter and craftsman, trained to teach elementary school, a profession his parents thought "safe," while being an artist "was terrible." Although he chafed at becoming a teacher, he discovered "that children should be listened to rather than lectured to," a lesson that shaped his approach for the rest of his career. In 1913, he was granted a leave to study at the Royal Art School in Berlin, an institution that trained art teachers. More than from course work, Albers was energized by exhibitions of Die Brücke, Blaue Reiter, and other modernists. He was overwhelmed by Edvard Munch even though he would later deride expressionism as "that sentimental, self-expression business." Albers' early career culminated in his joining the Bauhaus community, lured by its emphasis on craft. Darwent deftly characterizes the outsized egos and philosophical and petty rivalries that roiled the Bauhaus, most notably from proponents of the De Stijl movement, which "laid claim to the square, which Albers considered "the ideal form for visual experiment." In 1933, desperate to leave Nazi Germany, he accepted an invitation to teach at Black Mountain College, where for years he was the only painter. Albers' last teaching position was at Yale, where he was brought in to shake up the staid art department, and where, though admired by many, he became renowned for ruthless critiques. One student recalled him "as a cross between Bismarck and Santa Claus." Forced to retire, he began to work obsessively on the Homages series, completing more than 2,000 in his last 25 years.An authoritative and sensitive portrait of a modern master.

Kirkus Reviews