Albers\u2019 teaching materials about color interactions have long been used in UVM courses. Art faculty who were students here decades ago remember borrowing the silkscreen studies for Interactions of Color<\/em> (first published in 1963) from Howe Library, before the book was transferred to the Fleming Museum. Current students use Albers\u2019 work in painting, color photography, printmaking, and other studio courses to ground their studies in his maxims\u2014practice before theory <\/em>and actual, not factual<\/em>\u2014that stress the need for close observation as the foundation of any artist\u2019s understanding. Inspired by painters like Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), who sought to describe and codify interactions of color and sound, Albers developed these studies while teaching at the influential Bauhaus art school in Germany. Like many Bauhaus artists who were persecuted by the Nazis, he and his wife Anni Albers immigrated to the United States in 1933. He first taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina and later at Yale University, where his color studies became foundational in art pedagogy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Deepening these studies, Formulation: Articulation<\/em> (first published in 1972) considers more examples of \u201cperceptual ambiguities,\u201d in which two colors might initially appear to be the same, only to be revealed to be distinct based on how they interact with a clashing or complementary color. A color might also appear to pop or recede from a pattern, based on how it is articulated with surrounding colors. \u201cUntil one has the experience of knowing he is being fooled by color,\u201d as Albers explains, \u201cone cannot be expected to be very careful to look at things inquiringly.\u201d He goes on to write, \u201cOnly comparison entitles one to evaluation\u2026. I want to imbue others with my delight in the endless possibilities for new color experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seeing color is not only about the science of perception, however; followers of Albers\u2019 work have expanded upon these ideas to point out how understandings of color are also political and social. In exhibiting Formulation: Articulation<\/em>, the Fleming Museum will supplement Albers\u2019 color studies with artworks from its collection by artists like Glenn Ligon, Ellsworth Kelly, and David Powell. Such works can illuminate how the political and social dimensions of color inflect our lived experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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