Full Description
An incisive analysis of the pedagogy of influential artist and teacher Josef Albers.
An extraordinary teacher whose influence continues today, Josef Albers helped shape the Bauhaus school in Germany and established the art and design programs at Black Mountain College in North Carolina and Yale University. His books about color theory have informed generations, and his artworks are included in the canon of high-modernist non-representational art. The pedagogy Albers developed was a dynamic approach to teaching that transcended the modernist agendas and cultivated a material way of thinking among his students.
With this book, Jeffrey Saletnik explores the origins of Albers's teaching practices and their significance in conveying attitudes about form, material, and sensory understanding to artists Eva Hesse and Richard Serra. He demonstrates how pedagogy is a framework that establishes the possibility for artistic discourse and how the methods through which artists learn are manifested in their individual practices. Tracing through lines from Albers's training in German educational traditions to his influence on American postwar art, Josef Albers, Late Modernism, and Pedagogic Form positions Albers's pedagogy as central to the life of modernism.
Contents
Introduction: "Bye, bye, Bauhaus"
A Linear Constructions
1 From Object to Process: On Albers's Pedagogic Forms
Learning by Doing
Progressive Education
Educating Albers
Pedagogic Form
B Photography
2 Fold/Manifold: On Eva Hesse and Albers
Lightweight and Weighted Down
Folding and Unfolding
C Painting
3 Color Aid: On Richard Serra and Albers
Working Methods
Disciplined Disorientation
Epilogue: Playtime
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Image Credits
Index
