Thursday, July 6, 2017

Albers, Josef (1966). White Line Square IX [colored lithograph]. © 1966 Joef Albers and Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles, CA. © 2008 the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society, NY.

This is a simple work of nonobjective abstraction that is an example of the inaccessibility of modern art to the man on the street. Two comments: I enjoy the temperature calibration of the color purple. Second, I appreciate the creation of ambiguous and shallow space through the spatial arrangement of the square elements and the proximity of the analogous colors belonging to the two outside figures. |

The subject is not only the “square” and building an homage to it; it is putting front and center the influence the shape has on other elements, and in turn their influence on the shape. This is accomplished colored lithography. The elements of mutual adjustment in this work are the square, color, purity and line. Though the idea of “square” is the subject, the center of interest is actually a contrasting white line forming a hollow square. 


The arrangement of the shapes is such that a sense of sinking in to the white square,
or raising to the same shape (like a pyramid), is felt. In opposition to spatial ambiguity is the natural sense of static balance this work achieves. The elements are aligned in a vertically symmetric fashion, favoring the lower half of the picture plane. The result is a sense of overall stability. 

This work is a case study in employing unbalanced proportions. Clearly stable shapes with perfect perpendicular edges dominate, as do analogous and cold colors. This works equivalencies both stabilize (pictorial balance) and confuse (spatial ambiguity). The white stroke/square dominates attention. After a long pause there, one may become sensitive to the subtle temperature transition of the two purple figures. This is followed by a second transition not of coolness but of hue, from purple to red. 


The viewer seems to be on a near-level elevation as that of the figures. If, for example, the elements were perfectly centered on the picture plane, one would get the impression they’re looking slightly
up at the figures. The frame shape becomes a part of the subject and strongly supports this composition. Though it seems simple, elemental treatment and calibration is clearly deliberately considered. In addition, the tension between stability and depth is superb. This is a unified work. 


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