Paper Paintings

Joseph Albers collageRecently a two-volume book on Joseph Albers (1888–1976) landed on my desk: Interaction of Color, by Joseph Albers (Yale University Press, 1963). I had never studied him or his work, and was unfamiliar with it. Upon a flick through the book, I really can’t say that I was particularly excited by his abstract homages to the square. They make me yawn in fact. But two paper collages did catch my eye and impress me.

Woman with a Hat, Henri Matisse, 1905In an effort to understand the relationship between colour as expressed by old masters, Albers created reproductions of their work; two are presented in his book. One is Matisse’s fauvist painting Woman with a Hat of 1905, and the other is an Expressionst work that I don’t recognise (even a Google images search didn’t enlighten me).

So often we see paper collages created from cut paper – and many times very intricately – that it was a thrill to see these torn pieces of coloured paper laid side by side. Exciting and tactile, with a messy immediacy about them, their rough edges blend like paint, making the collages far more akin to painting than their sharp-edged counterparts.

Joseph Albers paper collageHere is what Albers says about them:

Therefore, in our study of the masters – both past and present – there is, beyond mere retrospection and above verbal analysis, re-creating by re-performing their selection and presentation of color; their seeing and reading of color – in other words, their giving a meaning to color.

Our aim is not production of precise replicas as copyists do in museums. We try to give a general impression only as to climate, temperature, aroma, or sound of their work – not minute details.

The purpose of such study is neither to find out, for instance, whether ultramarine or cobalt blue was used, nor to register the factual content of the painter’s palette.

It is another means of learning to develop a sensitive and critical eye for color relatedness.

What a great – and certainly educational – exercise. 

Expressionist artist Georges Rouault