Title: One and one is four : the Bauhaus photocollages of Josef Albers /
Authors: Albers, Josef; Meister, Sarah Hermanson,; Otto, Elizabeth, 1970-; Daffner, Lee Ann,; Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.),; Josef and Anni Albers Foundation,
Year: 2016
Subjects: Albers, Josef Exhibitions.; Albers, Josef; Albers, Josef, Expositions.; Collage; Bauhaus Exhibitions.; Bauhaus; Bauhaus Expositions.; Fotografie; Bauhaus; Photocollage Exhibitions.; Photography, Artistic Exhibitions; Photocollage; Photography, Artistic; Photocollage Expositions.; Photographie artistique Expositions.
Abstract: Josef Albers is widely recognized as a crucial figure in 20th-century art, both as an independent practitioner and as a teacher at the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College and Yale University. Albers made paintings, drawings and prints and designed furniture and typography. Arguably the least familiar aspect of his extraordinary career was his inventive engagement with photography, only widely known after his death, including his production of approximately 70 photocollages that feature photographs he made at the Bauhaus between 1928 and 1932. These works anticipate concerns that he would pursue throughout his career--the effects of adjacency, the exploration of color through white, black and gray, and the delicate balance between handcraft and industrial and mechanical form. Albers's photographs were first shown at MoMA in a modest exhibition in 1987, when the Museum acquired two photocollages. In 2015 the Museum acquired ten additional photocollages, making its collection the most substantial anywhere outside the Albers Foundation. This publication reproduces each of the photocollages Albers made at the Bauhaus, presenting the scope of this achievement for the first time. An introductory essay by Sarah Hermanson Meister situates them within the contexts of modernist photography, the Bauhaus ethos and of Albers's own practice--David Zwirner Books (viewed on November 11, 2016)
Contents: Josef Albers : an open mind for the newer and nearer / Sarah Hermanson Meister -- Plates -- Fragments of the world seen like this : photocollage at the Bauhaus / Elizabeth Otto -- Josef Albers's Bauhaus photocollages : a technical analysis / Lee Ann Daffner -- Photos as photography and photos as art / Josef Albers.