1. Josef Albers and Color
ART 113: Color

2. a few important concepts…

3. Simultaneous contrast:
-”the manner in which colors interact and affect one another”
-in other words, when colors interact, they may change appearance

4. Check out the simultaneous contrast!
Notice that each small gray square seems to be “tinged” with the complement of the ground color.
eg: the gray on red appears green,
or the gray orange appears bluish

5. Simultaneous Contrasts - Sonia Delaunay (1912)

6. Untitled (1972) lithograph
Sonia Delaunay (and her husband, Robert) worked extensively with color!
Untitled (1972) lithograph
Homage to Bleriot (1914)

7. Afterimage
–occurs when the eye grows tired of a hue and “spontaneously” creates the hue’s visual complement
-another way of thinking of this:
-the eye becomes “overexposed” to a hue (especially fully saturated ones) and seeks out relief by way of the hue’s complement
-afterimages usually only occur in strong color situations!
The cones in our eyes may tire of seeing red, for example. As a result, the remaining green and blue cones go to work. The result is a blue-green afterimage.

8. Stare at the white dot! Then, look to the right…

9. Josef Albers (1888-1976) Josef Albers
-taught at Bauhaus School in Germany
-Bauhaus = school that fused design, architecture, art
-Albers taught at Yale
-his method of teaching color involved first introducing to color through color interaction exercises, rather than beginning a student’s education with study of traditional color systems.
The goal: students develop a sense for color!
-Albers’s book: The Interaction of Color
-context, lighting critical to a color’s “reading”
Josef Albers

10. Homage to the Square
In 1949, Albers began his famous series of “square” paintings in which he investigated color relationships.
What did he vary?
-hues
-values
-color temperature
-saturation

11. Albers’s color interaction experiments:
-the relationship between the two colors must be unequal
-i.e. one color must dominate another!
Principles of Color interaction:
(aka the 3 rules that determine color interaction)
Light/Dark Value Contrast
Complementary Reaction or Effect
Subtraction

12. Light/Dark Value Contrast
Colors look lighter against a dark ground, and darker against a light ground.
The black/white contrast makes the different obvious, but using gray values as backgrounds also yields different color perceptions.
Consider how the red square reacts with the gray background as opposed to the black background.
Gray: red seems darker, more saturated
Black: red seems lighter, less saturated

13. Remember: our eye always seeks a color’s complementary!
Complementary Reaction or Effect
Remember: our eye always seeks a color’s complementary!
In the square on the left, the yellow-green appears much more saturated. Also, the yellow-green appears more yellow than green. This is because the highly saturated purple background makes our eyes seek out the complement: yellow.

14. Subtraction
“A strong or dominant color will subtract itself from a smaller or less dominant color” (Koenig)
In other words, looking at the squares below, the Y-O on the intense orange background seems more yellow because the orange (the dominant color) has been “subtracted” from it.

15. Color Subtraction Equations
It’s easiest to think of color subtraction as a “color equation.”
So, for the example above, the color equation would be:
YO – O = Y
(less dominant color) - (more dominant color)

16. Another example of the subtraction principle at work…
BV – B = V BV – V = B

17. And yet another example…
In this square, the strong green makes us seek red (remember: our eyes seek the complement). As a result, we see more of a reddish blue – or blue-violet
G (Y+B) – B = GY

18. And what did Josef Albers have to say about this?

19. You’re about to find out!
You and a peer will embark on an exciting journey of color exploration by completing 5 Albers exercises!
You and your partner will help each other out, and each make a copy of the exercise for your own records.
Five exercises might not seem like much, but they are kinda tough!