Josef and Anni Albers: Voyage Inside a Blind Experience
Is it possible to experience abstract artworks without using your eyes? So asks the exhibition Josef and Anni Albers: Voyage inside a blind experience, currently on view at The Glucksman at University College Cork in Ireland through November 4. Seminal works in a variety of media by both artists are shown alongside tactile models and braille texts; a darkroom includes objects that visitors are invited to explore by touch. The exhibition also investigates the ways in which Josef Albers’s influential teaching emphasized feeling as much as seeing art. Voyage inside a blind experience travels to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, in 2019, where it will be on view from January 10 through April 21.
This presentation is the latest in a number of global exhibitions celebrating the work and legacy of Josef and Anni Albers. Titled after Interaction of Color, the artist’s seminal 1963 handbook on color theory, Josef Albers: Interaction is a major retrospective at Villa Hügel, the home of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation. The exhibition is curated by Heinz Liesbrock, director of the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat in the neighboring city of Bottrop, where Albers was born in 1888. Anni Albers is an extensive retrospective taking in the full range of the artist’s pioneering career, from intricate small-scale works to complex wall hangings and the unique textiles she designed for mass production. Having just finished its viewing at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (K20 Grabbeplatz) in Düsseldorf, the show travels to Tate Modern, London, in October. Josef Albers in Mexico closed this month at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, where it had traveled following its critically acclaimed debut at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; the show explored the crucial influence of Mesoamerican art and monuments on the artist’s abstraction.
Pictured: Installation view, Josef and Anni Albers: Voyage inside a blind experience, The Glucksman, University College Cork, 2018, featuring Anni Albers, Line Involvement VI, 1964. Photo: Jed Niezgoda; Installation view, Josef and Anni Albers: Voyage inside a blind experience, The Glucksman, University College Cork, 2018, featuring Josef Albers, Studies for Homage to the Square. Photo: Jed Niezgoda
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