Anni Albers: Selected Writings on Design - Hardcover

Albers, Anni

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0819564478 ISBN 13: 9780819564474

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Anni Albers (1899 - 1994) was one of the most influential textile designers of the 20th century. Born in Berlin, in 1922 she became a student at the Bauhaus in Weimar, where she met her husband, Josef Albers. From 1933 to 1949 Albers taught at Black Mountain College. The fifteen essays gathered here illustrate Anni Albers's concept of design as the pursuit of wholeness ― "the coalition of form answering practical needs and form answering aesthetic needs." This beautifully illustrated book addresses the artistic and practical concerns of modern design and considers the ever-changing role of the designer.

Albers's work is in private collections and in those of leading museums both here and abroad. Among them are the Busch-Reisinger Museum at Harvard University, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Museum Neue Sammlung in Munich, the Bauhaus Archiv in Berlin, and the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York. Her previous books include On Weaving (1965) and On Designing (1961), both published by Wesleyan

About this title

From the Publisher:

8 1/2 x 10 trim. 25 color illus.

From the Inside Flap:

"Anni Albers brings an extraordinary order to weaving. She distinguishes 'useful' weaving (the worn, walked-on, and sat-upon) from the 'useless' (the pictorial), but in her hands both share the virtue of being unique as works of art. Masterful with the hand loom, Anni Albers exerts a similar mastery over the machine in so ordering her design that the machine also produces a work of art." -- Paul Schweikher, former Head of the Department of Architecture, Carnegie Institute of Technology

"The weavings of Anni Albers have bridged the gap between craft and art. They stand on their own as complete and thoughtful statements of her approach to life and to design." -- Cecil Lubell, former Executive Editor of American Fabrics Magazine

"How do we choose our specific material, our means of communication? Accidentally. Something speaks to us, a sound, a touch, hardness or softness, it catches us and asks us to be formed. We are finding our language, and as we go along we learn to obey their rules and their limits. We have to obey and adjust to those demands. Ideas flow from it to us and though we feel to be the creator we are involved in a dialogue with our medium. The more subtly we are tuned to our medium, the more inventive our actions will become." -- Anni Albers

About this edition

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0819564478
• ISBN 13: 9780819564474
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 120