Listeners, I heard you—a bunch of self-admitting hopeless romantics who wanted to hear more about people bound by attraction, fascination. By love. Though there are examples of romantic and sexual relationships between creators that are sprinkled throughout art history as we know it, it’s true that we have the most information about relationships from folks who lived in the last century—because we have greater access to documentation recording the lives of these people, and because, as the 20th century progressed, people—artists, perhaps especially—became more vocal about their relationships, less inhibited. Modern artists, artists especially from the first half of the 20th century, lived their art, and their relationships, out loud-- writing about them, talking about them, and sometimes even creating works of art about them.
This season, I’m rounding up stories about modern artists in love, in lust, in relationships— digging into these individuals, see how their liaisons, marriages, affairs, and connections played in or on their respective works of art, and how, if anything, they affected art history as we know it. I, for one, believe that it’s time for Modern Love.
Today: we’re highlighting a powerful artist couple who taught at a landmark place at a singular moment in history—Anni and Josef Albers.
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Episode Credits:
Research by Holly Sauer. Production and Editing by Kaboonki. Theme music by Alex Davis. Additional music by Storyblocks.
ArtCurious is sponsored by Anchorlight, an interdisciplinary creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle.
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Episode Transcript
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At the art museum where I worked as a curator for 13 years, I was in charge of many different projects, big and small: I curated blockbuster exhibitions about Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, I co-wrote exhibition catalogues for artists having their first solo exhibitions in the U.S.; I visited the studios of countless local artists; I answered a ton of emails. But one of my favorite projects was a rather small one: a tiny, one-room gallery dedicated to Black Mountain College, a little enclave in Western North Carolina that was one of the most exciting and experimental spaces in midcentury America, a place responsible for transforming the lives and careers of many artists—and not just the students who attended the college, but the professors who were involved there, too, on both short-term and long-term stays. Being able to rotate out exhibitions about this special place and this singular moment was a treat, especially because it’s a beautiful but sometimes overlooked part of my state’s history. I loved this gallery. And more than that—I loved being able to share the lives and works of those people who were involved in it. For most historians of Black Mountain, there is no one more closely linked to the College than Josef Albers. But rightly or wrongly, Albers gets all the attention, when it turns out this his partner—his wife, Anni—was also integral to the college’s success, and was an equally fascinating artist in her own right.
Some people think that visual art is dry, boring, lifeless. But the stories behind those paintings, sculptures, drawings, and photographs are weirder, more outrageous, or more fun than you can imagine. ArtCurious Season 13 is all about Modern Love, and today is the first of two episodes featuring a brief jaunt over to Black Mountain, North Carolina, to highlight a powerful artist couple who taught at a landmark place at a singular moment in history. Today is all about Anni and Josef Albers. This is the ArtCurious Podcast, exploring the unexpected, the slightly odd, and the strangely wonderful in Art History. I'm Jennifer Dasal.
The story of Anni and Josef Albers is a long one—Josef lived until age 88, and Anni until age 95. But their lives and careers are made easier to document due to the fact that there are several key moments—including some moments beyond their control, like war—that segment their lives into digestible parts. Not that this episode is going to be a full biography of either artist, because there’s just too much good stuff to share! But at least this will whet your appetite, perhaps, and my hope is that you seek out further details about both of these incredible artists.
Let’s begin with the firstborn of our two artsy babies. Josef Albers was born March 19, 1888, in Bottrop, about an hour’s drive north from the city of Cologne. Josef had a childhood marked by an exposure not to art, necessarily, but to making: his working-class parents were blacksmiths on his mother’s side, and his father was a carpenter and house painter who also occasionally performed handyman jobs. Early on, Josef learned alongside his father, slowly picking up various trades, like plumbing, electrical work, and even glazing or glass-fitting. Not that he intended to follow in his dear dad’s footsteps necessarily. He actually wanted to be a teacher, and for about five years in his early twenties, he taught elementary school in his hometown. But he left that career path in 1913 because the arts came calling. He enrolled at the Royal School of Art in Berlin and at the School of Arts and Crafts in Essen, studying everything from drawing to printmaking, and, fascinatingly, stained glass-making. But what really changed Josef Albers’s life was his enrollment, at the age of 32, in an art school in Weimar, Germany, in 1920, a little school that focused on the combining of the art and practical craft of design. This was the Staatliches Bauhaus, known simply today as the Bauhaus.
Josef Albers wasn’t the only person drawn to attend this fascinating design school—Annelise Elsa Frieda Fleischmann was, too. The woman who would eventually become known as Anni Albers was born in Berlin on June 12, 1899, 11 years after her future husband. And Anni’s background was pretty different than Josef’s was. Her family was considerably wealthy on two fronts: her father built a successful furniture making business, and her mother came from a family of publishing magnates. So right away, Anni didn’t have to worry about supporting herself or making a living. Instead, she was expected to marry well, especially marrying a man from an equally quote-unquote “substantial” financial background. But Anni didn’t necessarily jibe with that. She grew up with an interest in art, frequently painting during her childhood and teen years and hoping to pursue instruction in the fine arts, even after a meeting with the modern artist Oskar Kokoschka briefly derailed her interests when he looked at one of her paintings and sneered, “Why do you paint?” Eventually, Anni did keep painting, and most importantly, she cajoled her father into allowing her to attend art school.
But at the beginning, that art school education didn’t go well. She registered at the School of Applied Arts in Hamburg, but the school was strict, a bit harsh, and living conditions were poor—a particular contrast to her comfortable upbringing. More importantly, though, was that the school’s instruction was dry, boring… lifeless. And Anni knew she wanted something more, something different, fresh, and experimental. Her life changed when she stumbled upon a pamphlet advertising the programs of an art school in Weimar, and though she wasn’t admitted upon first application, she would begin the next portion of her life in April 21, 1922, when she entered the Bauhaus for the first time.
I’ve mentioned the Bauhaus twice now but haven’t yet given you a background to this school—but I hope you can tell by the narrative thus far that this was an important place, because it was. Here’s a brief history of the place. The Bauhaus was formed in 1919 by the influential German architect Walter Gropius with a kind of radical goal: to bring art and creativity back into the realm of everyday life, where any endeavor—whether it be painting, crafts, applied arts and design, sculpture, or more—would be given the same weight and the same importance in society. In his 1919 Proclamation of the Bauhaus, Gropius wrote, quote “Architects, sculptors, painters, we must all return to the crafts! For art is not a “profession.” There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. In rare moments of inspiration, transcending the consciousness of his will, the grace of heaven may cause his work to blossom into art. But proficiency in a craft is essential to every artist. Therein lies the prime source of creative imagination. Let us then create a new guild of craftsmen without the class distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist! Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity, and which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.” That was a bit long, but my intention is to show you that Gropius’s Proclamation was truly a manifesto, a call to action, one with a goal of changing the world—not just how art itself would be conceived and what could be defined as art, but also with hopes of altering the teacher/student relationship. It was a call for creativity to be more collaborative, more about community and the transmission of ideas. Keep this in mind because we’ll come back to this structure later on in this episode.
Josef Albers entered the Bauhaus in 1920 with the intention of pursuing study in stained glass, a medium he chose because of that perfect craft/design/art combination that was so important in Bauhaus rhetoric. But it wasn’t his only interest, nor his singular focus. After his introductory courses, he also learned to design furniture, create collages, and take photographs. But his work with glass was so good that by 1922, only two years into his study, he was appointed a junior master, and head of the Bauhaus’s glass workshop—the first student to become an instructor at the school.
That was Anni Fleischmann’s first year at the Bauhaus, and it was during that period that Anni met her future husband, someone she later described as a, quote, “lean, half-starved, ascetic-looking Westphalian” with “irresistible blond bangs.” I really love how much she loved his bangs. That’s just too cute. But the Bauhaus itself wasn’t making as positive an impression upon her as Josef did. Anni struggled to find direction—all students at the Bauhaus were required to choose one main workshop, their focus—and but though Anni originally wanted to study painting and, soon after, glass work with Josef, she found herself barred entry. Grudgingly, she found herself persuaded to enroll in a textile workshop. This was antithetical to the Bauhaus and to Gropius’s initial vision of the school, where he claimed that there would be, quote, “no difference between the beautiful and the strong sex.” And yet, there were differences, and Anni found herself sequestered in an all-female workshop, relegated to textiles—long considered to be a “feminine” medium (and I’ve got “feminine” here in air quotes) and one deemed of lesser import. Still, she made the best with what she had, creating abstract wall hangings and textile-inspired works on paper, often using disparate elements like horsehair and metallic thread to add texture and interest to her more traditional yarns. Eventually, Anni found her way, and grew to enjoy her work, later noting, quote, “Gradually, threads caught my imagination.”
And Josef and Anni caught each other’s eyes, too. They made it official and got married in 1925, settling in Dessau at the Bauhaus’s new location.
Coming up next, the Alberses kick it around Dessau for a while, but they don’t stay in Germany forever. Their big move across the Pond is coming up next. Stick with us over this ad break. And hey, want to listen to this show ad-free? Join me over at Patreon today for $4 a month, and you’ll be all set. Check it out—patreon.com/artcurious.
Welcome back to ArtCurious.
The newly minted Anni Albers never officially collaborated with her husband, you can see some overlap in one another’s works of art, a gentle visual reminder of their connection. Anni’s weavings were inspired more by painting than anything else, combining elements gleaned from Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, and infused with color. Josef, meanwhile, formed bright stained-glass compositions with thick, grid-like frets reminiscent of the warp and weft of textiles. Both together and apart, these artists pored over the same concepts of color, abstraction, verticality, and geometry.
The Bauhaus, due to a number of factors, began experiencing a number of difficulties mostly stemming from political pressures. The school shifted locations, first from Weimar to Dessau, and then to Berlin, all while shifting its leadership, academic course offerings, instructors, and other options. Like many a utopia, it began fracturing under the influence of varying ideals and warring visions. And things only got worse. As the 1920s moved into the 1930s and Germany grew more and more totalitarian in its leadership, the Bauhaus was seen as a problem: a school of intellectual thought hell-bent on breaking the rules rather than following them. After Hitler was named chancellor in 1933, the Nazis pressured the Bauhaus to fall in line with party beliefs, declaring the school to be one of those purveyors of degenerate ideas—and of course degenerate works of art—and thus needed to be tweaked, you could say. Instead of kowtowing to the party’s demands, Bauhaus officials and instructors voted to shut down the school entirely. Josef Albers was one of those who voted for the shutdown.
But there was a glimmer of light on the horizon. That year, 1933, the Alberses opted to emigrate to the United States, an especially good idea since Anni was Jewish. And a good gig was soon offered to them—the architect Philip Johnson recommended the couple to teach at a brand-new liberal arts college in the mountains of beautiful North Carolina. This small college ended up being Anni and Josef’s home for almost two decades. That home was Black Mountain College.
It very easily could not have worked. When architect Phillip Johnson, then serving as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, recommended Josef as an art teacher to John A. Rice, Black Mountain’s founder, he informed Rice of one little caveat: Josef spoke no English. Rice gave him the job anyway, and by the time the Albers arrived in North Carolina in November 1933, Josef knew enough English to say, quote, “To make open the eyes,” his response to the question of his ambitions as an instructor of art.
We can’t underestimate just how different Black Mountain was in comparison to most colleges and universities at the time. Its core principles were rather egalitarian, with its governance being managed by all involved, from top to bottom. The college was both owned and operated by its faculty, and everyone, including all the students, managed its operations—everything from kitchen duty, to landscaping and maintenance, to janitorial work and building projects. Because just like at the Bauhaus, art was a hands-on endeavor, and art was considered central to learning. And by the way, “art” didn’t just mean “the visual arts.” It meant anything creative: music, dance, poetry, performance. It was all connected, and those at Black Mountain were thus intimately connected to their college and each other. This was all helped considerably by its somewhat remote location, located about twenty minutes east of Asheville by car. The folks at Black Mountain grew tight, and this one-of-a-kind environment, less “lecturey” and more communal, both attracted top talent and produced the same in its students. The awesome Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center has a partial list of those involved in BMC on their website, but I’m going to read you a brief selection here. Ready? Let’s go. Besides Josef and Anni, we have Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Cy Twombly, Kenneth Noland, Susan Weil, Vera B. Williams, Ben Shahn, Ruth Asawa (who is one of my favorites, by the way), Franz Kline, Arthur Penn, Buckminster Fuller, and, as a rather direct hint for our next episode, the fantastic Jacob Lawrence.
One of the stories I love about Josef’s early years at the College is in regard to his teaching style. What Philip Johnson had originally called a caveat—his lack of English-- actually turned into a bright spot. Because of his limited vocabulary, Josef couldn’t lecture to them, so instead he drew them near, with his students often circling around him, so that he could show them—actually show them—whatever he was talking about. It was all very gestural, and there are some amazing photos of Josef, which I’ll link on my website, showing Josef waving his arms, standing on chairs, tracing squares in the air with his finger, and more, while his students imitate him. It was an endearing way to teach, to be sure.
Anni, too, had to find her own path at Black Mountain. Hired as an assistant professor, she sometimes had to make do with figuring out creative solutions to problems, like when, in the early 1940s, a classroom change meant that her looms for her weaving classes weren’t yet set up and ready to go. So instead of worrying about it, Anni sent her students outside to source their own weaving materials from nature. Talk about hands-on learning. This connection to nature was key for Anni as an artist too. While living at Black Mountain, she and Josef would often road trip down to Mexico over holiday breaks, a journey that usually took a week, one-way, by car. Both of the Alberses were fascinated by the modernity of Mexico, especially Mexico City, and rubbed elbows with the likes of Diego Rivera, furniture designer Clara Porset, and the Guatemalan abstract artist Carlos Mérida. But for Anni, what was equally fascinating was the ongoing connection with Mexico’s ancient roots, how its present reflected its past. She began collecting Pre-Columbian art and artifacts and used them as inspiration for a new series of pictorial weavings beginning in the mid-1930s. Take, as an example, her 1936 work, Ancient Writing, a piece now in the Smithsonian’s collection. A bold, almost graphic textile, this piece was one of the first Anni created based on the concept that, in earlier centuries, there was no written mode of communication in, for example, Peru—and that traditional textiles were frequently made for communication. Seeing a direct link to the written word as we know it in Anni’s works here isn’t easy, but that was part of the point. The mystery of it, its unknowability, reflected how it feels to be a modern viewer trying to grapple with an ancient code. As she wrote in 1936, quote, “Wonderful ancient art, frequently almost unknown, hardly excavated even when it is known.” Understanding wasn’t always the end goal.
It's probably clear to you by now that the Albers didn’t like to remain stagnant in their careers, and this period at Black Mountain was one of the most interesting and bustling for them both. That’s coming up next, after this quick break. Come right back.
Welcome back to ArtCurious.
Both Anni and Josef Albers were busy at Black Mountain—not just with their curricula, but with their own projects. The college’s feeling of experimentation rubbed off on them, too. Anni, as we know, tried to fuse a sense of modernity into a medium frequently more associated with tradition, and worked to bridge the gap between so-called “fine art” and craft. Josef, for his part, became ever more obsessed with trying new printmaking techniques and focusing on abstraction and color theory, and began writing about both the techniques of making art and of the art education experience. In fact, both of the Alberses were writers, especially in the latter half of their respective careers. Anni completed numerous essays on art and textiles and published two books: On Designing in 1959 and On Weaving in 1965. Josef’s own book, the highly influential 1963 tome Interaction of Color, was his, quote, “record of an experimental way of studying color and teaching color,” combined those dual interests of artmaking and education. As one might expect from a man who spent his years teaching art, the book was notable not only for its color theory, but also for its constructive suggestions for exercises and putting those theories into practice.
In teaching about color, Josef wasn’t just preaching an abstract concept. He had been living it for years by Interaction of Color was published in the 1960s. In 1950, the artist began his most well-known series called Homage to the Square, a series that would occupy his professional world for the last twenty-five years of his life. And if you know Josef Albers, you know these works. He created over one thousand of them, and they follow a general theme: three or four superimposed squares, weighted more heavily on their bottom edges so that the squares aren’t aligned with the center of the composition. The colors, though—they change. Sometimes they are vastly different, but often there is a more subtle variation in the palette. Take his 1959 work, Homage to the Square: Apparition, now at the Guggenheim in New York, as an example. Created with oil paint, the work features four squares in yellow, gray, blue, and green, and as you might expect from the title of his book, it was an experiment in the interaction of color. How do these colors, placed atop each other, change the optics of the scene? How does it change our ability, as viewers, to perceive what’s in front of us? How can color affect our understanding of space, of light, and even of the simple form of the square itself? And speaking of simplicity: that’s the beauty of Albers’s Homage to the Square series—in that these works aren’t simple at all. The more you look at them, the more your eyes and your brain attempt to resolve what feels like a sense of movement, an illusion of visual planes advancing and receding. Space seems to shift, all while remaining perfectly still. It’s a marvel. As Albers wrote of this effect, quote, “Choice of the colors used, as well as their order, is aimed at an interaction-influencing and changing each other forth and back. Thus, character and feeling alter from painting to painting without any additional ‘hand writing’ or, so-called, texture. Though the underlying symmetrical and quasi-concentric order of squares remains the same in all paintings-in proportion and placement-these same squares group or single themselves, connect and separate in many different ways.”
Anni and Josef Albers left Black Mountain College after sixteen years when Josef accepted a position as chairman of the Department of Design at Yale University. By that point, both Josef and Anni were not only acclaimed instructors, but also acclaimed artists. Anni enjoyed her first solo retrospective exhibition in 1949 at the Museum of Modern Art—which, by the way, was also the first solo show ever dedicated to a textile artist at that institution. But you didn’t have to just be in New York to enjoy the show, because the exhibition traveled to over 25 museums throughout the U.S. and Canada for approximately two years, introducing thousands of museumgoers to her unique works that dissolved the boundaries between art and craft. The following year, she was commissioned to design the draperies for the Rockefeller Guest House in New York, another example of her reach and the interest in her work at the highest level of the moneyed, artsy class. And museum interest didn’t stop there. In the mid-1960s, the Jewish Museum commissioned her to produce a tapestry to honor the victims of the Holocaust. Completed in a meditative combination of gray, beige, and silver threads, the final work, titled Six Prayers, is a true highlight of Anni’s oeuvre, a monumental piece worthy of its intended purpose. And in the meantime, she never stopped trying something new, experimenting with multiple printmaking techniques from the 1960s onwards, from lithography and embossing, to silkscreens and photo-offset printing. And Josef did, too. Between his chairmanship duties at Yale, he continued to write about art theory, technique, and education, and in 1971 at the age of 83, he enjoyed another first: he became the first living artist to have a solo retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City—a museum not typically known for its showcasing of contemporary artists. And even up to his final days, Josef was actively pursuing new aims in his Homage to the Square series. He died at age 88 on March 25, 1976, leaving Anni, age 77 behind. She’d outlive him by nearly twenty years, and when she died on May 4, 1994, she was 94 years old.
It’s sometimes strange for folks to hear that Anni and Josef Albers, who were married for over 50 years, who taught in some of the same locations, and were fascinated by many of the same concepts, never worked together in a collaborative way. But like Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst from our last episode, they didn’t have to—both artists were strong enough in their respect for their own work, and that of their partner’s, that butting themselves together didn’t feel necessary. But just because they didn’t create a physical work of art together doesn’t mean that their careers weren’t affected by their love for one another. In fact, the beautiful thing is that the opposite was true. The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, established to perpetuate the couple’s archives, principles, and works of art, put it best when they noted, quote, “they fostered one another’s creativity and shared their profound conviction that art was central to human existence and that morality and creativity were aligned.” Who could ask for more in a professional and personal partnership than that, right there?
Next time on ArtCurious, we’re going to focus on another pair of artists who enjoyed a spate of time in the gorgeous mountain surrounds of Black Mountain College-albeit for a much shorter time. But their story is much bigger, and more complicated, than that. You don’t want to miss this one.
Thank you for listening to the ArtCurious Podcast. This episode was written, produced, and narrated by me, Jennifer Dasal. HUGE thanks to Holly Sauer for her excellent writing and research help for this episode. As always I had waaaaay too much great research to use in putting together this episode, so head over to YouTube where I’ll be posting some exclusive content about the Alberses that I didn’t get to use for the show today. Check it out.
The ArtCurious theme music is by Alex Davis at alexdavismusic.com, and our podcast is co-produced by Kaboonki - podcasts, creative video, and more. Subscribe to their show, Subgenre, a podcast about the movies, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at subgenrepodcast.com. Kaboonki: Leave your mark. The ArtCurious Podcast is sponsored primarily by Anchorlight. Anchorlight is a creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space, Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle. Please visit anchorlightraleigh.com.
The ArtCurious Podcast is also fiscally sponsored by VAE Raleigh, a 501c3 nonprofit creativity incubator, which means you can donate tax-free to ArtCurious to show your support, and you can join us at Patreon for the price of a cup of coffee. Check back with us soon as we explore some of the most unexpected, slightly odd, and strangely wonderful Modern art lovers in art history.
