The Gray Cloth

Figure 2.9 llustration by Scheerbart- colossal walls were made completely out of coloured glass, with coloured ornaments, so that only subdued daylight shone into the interior

(Scheerbart, 1914)

The Interaction of Color

© Josef Albers 1975

The book “Interaction of Color” is a record of an experimental way of studying colour and of teaching colour. In visual perception a colour is almost never seen as it really is -- as it physically is. This fact makes colour the most relative medium in art.

Through this book, I found out that in order to use colour effectively it is necessary to recognize that colour deceives continually. Colour should be learned that one and the same colour evokes innumerable readings. Instead of mechanically applying or merely implying laws and rules of colour harmony, distinct colour effects are produced by making, for instance, 2 very different colours look alike, or nearly alike. This book aims such study is to develop through experience by trial and error. This means, specifically, seeing colour action as well as feeling colour relatedness.

This book, therefore, does not follow an academic conception of “theory and practice”. It reverses this order and places practice before theory, which after all, is the conclusion of practice. As such, practical exercise demonstrates through colour deception (illusion) the relatively and instability of colour. And experience teaches that in visual perception there is a discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect.

The practice of interaction of colour will lead from a visual realization of the interaction between colour and colour to an awareness of the independence of colour with form and placement; with quantity; with quality and with pronouncement. Each exercise is explained and illustrated -- not to give specific answer, but to suggest a way of study.

Figure 2.10 Colour mixture in paper - illusion of transparence (Albers, 1975, p. 26)