Josef Albers

Homage to the Square: "Ascending"
1953

Not on view

Date
1953

Classification
Paintings

Medium
Oil on composition board

Dimensions
Overall: 43 7/16 × 43 7/16in. (110.3 × 110.3 cm)

Accession number
54.34

Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase

Rights and reproductions
©The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

API
artworks/4079

Josef Albers began his Homage to the Square series in the summer of 1949, and made more than a thousand related paintings (ranging in size from 12- to 48-inch squares) over the next twenty-five years. Albers developed four related layouts, three of them composed of three squares each, and the fourth composed of four squares. These strictly ordered compositions were merely means to an end. He explained: “The scheme of the Homages has no real esthetic consequences by itself. There were hundreds of possibilities, but since my main problem is color. . .let’s have a scheme, a cooking pot that cooks for four people, and no more. Therefore, let the colors react in the prison in which I put them.”

Each work reveals how our perception of a single color is variable—it might project or recede, look brighter or dimmer—depending on its proximity to and interaction with adjacent colors. “Ascending” is typical of the paintings in the series. To make each one, Albers would squeeze the paint directly from the tube and then, using a palette knife, spread it evenly on wood fiberboard panels, which he preferred to canvas because of the resistance offered by its hard surface. Like a composer writing imaginative variations on a single melodic theme, Albers created countless color combinations in which the value and effect of individual colors change markedly from work to work.

Part of a series:
Hommage au Carre
15 works

A minimalist artwork featuring a series of concentric squares with colors graduating from yellow at the center, to light orange, to a deeper orange, and finally to a reddish-orange on the outermost square, all on a white background.
A minimalist artwork featuring a series of three concentric squares with varying shades of gray and maroon, centered on a white background.
A minimalist artwork featuring a series of nested squares with a progression of colors from a dark gray outer square to a bright green innermost square, all on a white background.
A minimalist artwork featuring a series of nested squares with a large green square surrounding a smaller blue square, all on a white background.
A geometric abstract artwork featuring a series of nested squares in shades of blue and gray, centered on a white background. The squares create a visual effect of depth, with the innermost square appearing lighter in color.
A minimalist artwork featuring a series of concentric squares in shades of orange, peach, and yellow, centered on a white background.
A minimalist artwork featuring a series of nested squares with a large blue square on the outside, a smaller black square in the middle, and an even smaller red square at the center, all on a white background.
A minimalist artwork featuring two concentric squares with a pale yellow outer square and a bright yellow inner square, centered on a white background.
A minimalist artwork featuring a series of three concentric squares, each a different color, with a yellow outer square, an orange middle square, and a red inner square, all on a white background.
A minimalist artwork featuring a series of nested squares in shades of orange, gray, and black, centered on a white background.


On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

Learn more about this project

Learn more at whitney.org/artport

On the Hour projects can contain motion and sound. To respect your accessibility settings autoplay is disabled.