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Traditionally art is to create and not to revive. To revive: leave that to the historians, who are looking backward.

Josef Albers

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Josef Albers
Age: 88 †
Born: 1888
Born: March 19
Died: 1976
Died: March 25
Artist
Designer
Painter
Photographer
Printmaker
University Teacher
Joseph Albers
Albers
Create
Looking
Revive
Art
Traditionally
Historians
Backward
Historian
Tradition
Leave

More quotes by Josef Albers

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The aim of art is a constant, and a continuous job to reveal visually the attitude of our mentality. And the less we disturb the influence of our mentality the more I believe we come close to the truth.
Josef Albers
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The role of art for me is the visualization of attitude, of the human attitude towards life, towards the world.
Josef Albers
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If you don't do it my way, I suggest you commit suicide.
Josef Albers
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I start from experience and read. . .always between polarities - loud and not-loud, young and old, spring and winter. If I can make black and white behave together instead of shooting at each other only, I feel proud.
Josef Albers
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When we were in the seminary we got a stipend direct from the government and for that stipend we had an obligation to stick to our teaching job for five years.
Josef Albers
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Just as the unmusical ear is not competent to judge music, so it is likewise with pictures, whether they are paintings, drawings or photos. Only a sensitive and trained eye gives us the right to judge.
Josef Albers
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Therefore art means: you have to believe, to have faith, that is, cultivate vision.
Josef Albers
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I prefer to see with closed eyes.
Josef Albers
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When we are honest - that's my saying - if we are honest then we will reveal ourselves. But we do not have to make an effort to be individualistic, different from others.
Josef Albers
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It is not so for art in appreciation because art is concerned with human behavior. And science is concerned with the behavior of metal or energy. It depends on what the fashion is. Now today it's energy. It's the same soul behind it. The same soul, you see.
Josef Albers
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Thus art is not an object, it is an experience.
Josef Albers
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In Italy the artist is a god. Now if the artist is a god, the scientist is likewise a god.
Josef Albers
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There is no difference between science and art when it comes to creativeness, productiveness, to come to conclusions and to formulations.
Josef Albers
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Independent of harmony rules, any color 'goes' or 'works' with any other color, presupposing that their quantities are appropriate.
Josef Albers
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I paint the way I spread butter on pumpernickel.
Josef Albers
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In my basic courses I have always tried to develop discovery and invention which, in my opinion, are the criteria of creativeness.
Josef Albers
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I have taught my students not to apply rules or mechanical ways of seeing.
Josef Albers
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Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.
Josef Albers
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A painter paints because he has no time not to paint.
Josef Albers
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Whether something 'has color' or not is as hard to define verbally as are such questions as, 'What is music?' or 'What is musical?
Josef Albers