The first publication to highlight dualities in the work of Josef Albers, Duets reveals how a lifetime of experimenting with related forms increases perception.
Josef Albers believed that “in math and science, one plus one is two,” but “in art, one plus one is two and also many more.” This innovative volume explores Albers’s idea that through variations in color, structure, or proportion, two paintings or two disparate elements within a single painting are simultaneously similar and the same. Across various bodies of work, Albers transforms repetition into an ongoing process of discovery.
As art historian Nicholas Fox Weber writes, Albers returned throughout his life to this theme, playing “two related forms against one another to demonstrate the multiple events, exciting and mysterious, that occur as a result of dualities. To juxtapose closely related forms enabled Albers to give you, the audience whom he cherished, a visual feast.” Focused on paired compositions, Josef Albers: Duets offers a fresh and compelling way to encounter the artist’s work.
Published to accompany the first exhibitions devoted to dualities in the artist’s work, the catalogue brings together paintings and works on paper from the 1930s through the 1970s shown at David Zwirner in Paris and Los Angeles. Organized in collaboration with The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, the exhibitions included selections from Treble Clefs, Variants, and the groundbreaking Homage to the Square series.
The book features a conversation between David Zwirner partner David Leiber and the acclaimed film director Luca Guadagnino in which they discuss the beauty and complexities of multiplicities, reversals, and variations across art forms. A text by Nicholas Fox Weber, director of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, discusses the significance of duality and seriality in the artist’s work. Together, these contributions position Josef Albers: Duets as an essential new perspective on Albers’s enduring influence.
