A Critical Account of Some of Josef Albers' Concepts of Color

Abstract

Joseph Albers’ book Interaction of Color is widely influential but, according to Lee, has not received close critical attention. Lee undertakes to refute Albers’ general claims about colour experience (that colour deceives continually) and to show that Albers’ system of perceptual education is fundamentally misleading (Albers ‘places practice before theory’). Four topics in Albers’ account of colour are examined critically: additive and subtractive colour mixture, the tonal relations of colours, the Weber-Fechner Law and simultaneous contrast. In each case Albers is shown to have made fundamental errors with serious consequences for his general claims about colour and his pedagogical method. It is suggested that Albers’ belief in the importance of colour deception is related to a misconception about aesthetic appreciation (that it depends upon some kind of confusion about visual perception). It is suggested that the scientific colour hypothesis of Edwin H. Land should be considered in lieu of the concepts held by Albers. Finally, there are implications for a reassessment of Albers’ artworks that might follow a loss of faith in his colour concepts that seem to have been their foundation.

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