Josef Albers at Barbara Krakow

This one appeared in the February 2004 issue of artsMEDIA. The artwork can be viewed here. Josef Albers: Prints 1963-1974 Barbara Krakow Gallery 10 Newbury Street, Boston, MA Through March 24 by Tim Peterson This show features an edition of screenprints done by painter Josef Albers in 1970 while working with the publisher Josef Keller. Such prints demonstrate Albers' efforts to re-envision this commercial medium as a fine arts medium, and were originally sold in large editions and priced cheaply. Some confusion regarding their value arose as a result, and many prints were not always treated with the utmost care. What makes this show such a rare treat is its remarkably pristine condition. These screenprints further develop the "Homage to the Square" series that Albers pursued for the last half of his career. This series explored interactions between colors while employing a controlled formal vocabulary of squares inside other squares. Some impressive optical effects result. In "Homage to the Square: Edition Keller 1a," Albers plays with light and saturation to make the inner two squares vibrate sympathetically and the square around them appear lighter at its inner edges and darker at its outer ones. And in "Homage to the Square: Edition Keller 1h," Albers' placement of peach between a certain orange and a certain yellow creates the impression of a thin white veil placed over the orange background.         The accusation has been made that such pieces are "academic exercises," but these prints clearly have an expressiveness and power as images in themselves. Such complaints do speak to a paradox going on here, that the marks of Albers' hand are not visible in the work even though he saw himself as a craftsman. But Albers' expressiveness lay in the use of color, not gesture, and we may never find language with which to describe this achievement since, as the artist himself once pointed out, our "nomenclature of color is most inadequate."