Interaction of Color: Unabridged text and selected plates (Revised Edition) / Josef Albers

Identifier:REF.DP.1925

Dimensions:iv, 74 p. illus. (part col.) 22 cm.

Copyright dates:1963

Subjects: art theory, color systems, colors, cool colors, primary colors, secondary colors, subtractive mixture, theory, warm colors

Description:Conceived as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students, this timeless book presents Albers’s unique ideas of color experimentation in a way that is valuable to specialists as well as to a larger audience.

Originally published by Yale University Press in 1963 as a limited silkscreen edition with 150 color plates, Interaction of Color first appeared in paperback in 1971, featuring ten representative color studies chosen by Albers. The paperback has remained in print ever since and is one of the most influential resources on color for countless readers.

Albers’s original unabridged text demonstrates such principles as color relativity, intensity, and temperature; vibrating and vanishing boundaries; and the illusions of transparency and reversed grounds. Now available in a larger format and with enhanced production values, this expanded edition celebrates the unique authority of Albers’s contribution to color theory and brings the artist’s iconic study to an eager new generation of readers.

Contents: Color recollection - visual memory -- Color reading and contexture -- Why color paper - instead of pigment and paint -- A color has many faces - the relativity of color -- Lighter and/or darker - light intensity, lightness ; Gradation studies - new presentations ; Color intensity - brightness -- 1 color appears as 2 - looking like the reversed grounds -- 2 different colors look alike - subtraction of color -- Why color deception? - after-image, simultaneous contrast -- Color mixture in paper - illusion of transparence -- Factual mixtures - additive and subtractive -- Transparence and space-illusion ; Color boundaries and plastic action -- Optical mixture - after-image revised -- The Bezold effect -- Color intervals and transformation -- The middle mixture again - intersecting colors -- Color juxtaposition - harmony - quantity -- Film color and volume color - 2 natural effects -- Free studies - a challenge to imagination ; Stripes - restricted juxtaposition ; Fall leaf studies - an American discovery -- The masters - color instrumentation -- The Weber - Fechner law - the measure in mixture -- From color temperature to humidity in color -- Vibrating boundaries - enforced contours -- Equal light intensity - vanishing boundaries -- Color theories - color systems -- On teaching color - some color terms ; Explanation of color terms ; Variants versus variety -- In lieu of a bibliography - my first collaborators.