<ct>Art as Experience

<ca>Josef Albers

Science and life are not always the best friends. They are sometimes
competitors, even as are theory and practice. In school we can see this in
teaching the science of nature. We as children had to learn natural history,
which tried to classify or dissect the phenomena of nature. But soon we
underwent the experience that pressed herbariums are not nature at all and
the herbalist is a dry man, like his specimens; or, that anatomy has to do
mostly with dead bodies.
After this funereal experience with dried leaves and stuffed owls and
squirrels we felt a deep need of going out-of-doors to get, instead of the
separated parts, the connection between them; instead of scientific
systematizing, the events of life, the vital functions, the conditions essential
to life in short, to get life.
Life is change day and night, cold and warmth, sun and rain. It is
more in-between the facts than the facts themselves. Rules are the result of
experience and come later, and discovering the rules is more life-full than
their application. Linnaeus, the botanist, built his classifications after many
experiences and much investigation. How could we have begun childrens
botanical studies with his final results!
I believe it is now time to make a similar change of method in our art
teaching that we move from looking at art as a part of historical science to

an understanding of art as a part of life. Under the term art I include all
fields of artistic purposes the fine arts and applied arts, also music,
dramatics, dancing, the theatre, photography, movies, literature, and so on.
If we review what is being done now, what directions our art studies
take in relation to the past, the present, also the future, the answer is clear:
We over-accentuate the past, and often are more interested in drawing out a
continuous line of historical development than in finding out which of certain
art problems are related to our own life, or in getting an open mind for the
newer and nearer and forward-looking art results of our period.
Do not misunderstand me. I admire the earlier art, particularly the
earliest art. But we must not overlook that they do not belong to our time
and that the study of them has the purpose of understanding the spirit of
their period or, what is more important, to get a standard for comparisons
with our own work. What went on is not necessarily more important than
what is going on.
I think we have to shift from the data to the spirit, from the person to
the situation, or from biography to biology in its real sense. As regards art
results, from the content to the sense, from the what to the how; as
regards art purposes, from the representation to the revelation.
To speak in a more practical way: We should try, for instance to see a
chair apart from its functional characteristics, as a living creature and, if you
wish, perhaps as a person, such as a worker, a servant, a peasant, or an
aristocrat; and apart from its stylistic characteristics, as an apparatus willing

to hold us, to carry, to surround or embrace us, to give us a rest, or to show

or to represent us; that we recognize the different needs of a chair in our
living-room, on the porch, at the table, or at the desk.
To speak in general terms: We should discover for instance that music,
too, has to do with proportion and the values of line and volume; also that
literature can be static and dynamic, and can have staccatos and
crescendos, and poems can have color; that they play on the stage has not
only dramatic climax but also an optical and an acoustical one; that there are
musical qualities in all art that every art work is built (i.e., composed), has
order, consciously or unconsciously.
To say it essentially: Everything has form and every form has meaning.
The ability to select this quality is culture. If you agree with me that religion
worked out only on Sunday is no religion at all, then we must be united in
this opinion, that seeing art only in museums, or using art only as
amusement or recreation in lazy hours, shows no understanding of art at all.
If art is an essential part of culture and life, then we must no longer
educate our students either to be art historians or to be imitators of
antiquities, but for artistic seeing, artistic working, and more, for artistic
living. Since artistic seeing and artistic living are a deeper seeing and living
and school has to be life since we know that culture is more than
knowledge, we in the school have the duty to remove all the fields of art
from their decorative sideplace into the center of education as we are
trying to do at Black Mountain College.

To intensify this purpose, we have to bring about in school a nearer

connection, or better, an interpenetration, of all the art disciplines and
artistic purposes in school life, which will show that their problems are very
much the same.
Then we will learn through the parallelism of their common problems
for example, the problems of balance or proportion that they are tasks of
our daily life too.
As academic separatism is passing, we in school have to connect as far
as possible the scientific fields with the artistic fields. Isnt it true, for
instance, that some historical periods are better identified through their
architecture or pictures than through their conquerors and wars? And do not
some costumes tell us often more than many queens? Generally, history
should regard life as more important than death, and culture more serious
than politics.
How in school would you value an economist, chemist, geographer who
lives only in the nineteenth century? Or a writing class which never shows
contemporary problems? And what about an artist, a language teacher or a
musician of the same taste! Let us be younger with our students and include
in our consideration new architecture and new furniture, modern music and
modern pictures. We ought to discuss movies and fashions, make-up and
stationery, advertising, shop signs and newspapers, modern songs and jazz.
The pupil and his growing into his world are more important than the teacher
and his background.

Our aim is a general development of an open-eyed and open-minded

youth seeking out the growing spiritual problems of our days, not closed to
his environment; and forward-looking, with the experience that interests and
needs are changing; a youth with criticism enough to recognize that socalled good old forms sometimes can be over-used, that perhaps some
great art important to our parents does not say anything to us; one who has
reverence for earnest work and working, even though it seems at first new
and strange to him, and is able to withhold judgment until clearer perception
comes; who knows that ones own experience and discovery and
independent judgment are much more than repeated book knowledge.
We know that a short time of school studies cannot produce competent
judges of art. Therefore, we at Black Mountain are content when our student,
for instance, sees a connection between a modern picture and music by
Bach, or a relationship between patterns of textiles and music; or, if he is
able to differentiate the form-character of a china pitcher from a glass
pitcher, or an aluminum pitcher; or to recognize the difference between an
advertisement of 1925 and one of 1935; or, when he finds out that in art we
still can experience revelation and wonder.
We want a student who sees art as neither a beauty shop nor imitation
of nature, as more than embellishment and entertainment; but as a spiritual
documentation of life; one who sees that real art is essential life and
essential life is art.

<fn>Two years ago, Mr. Albers came from the Bauhuas in Dessau to Black Mountain College in
North Carolina to teach art. At the Bauhaus, it is common practice to coin words and invent
phrases to express those meanings for which there seem to be no adequate provision in the
German language. Mr. Albers made use of this technique in his article, written in English. The
excellent manuscript put the Editor in a quandary. Mr. Albers had something to say. He said it in
his own way and he said it forcefully. Attempts to tinker it into more smooth English detracted
from meaning and power. The article is therefore presented virtually as Mr. Albers wrote it.

<bmt> Albers, Josef. Art as Experience. The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. Reprinted
from Progressive Education, October 1935.