Josef Albers
        Document 2: Report on a course in basic drawing, design         and color given at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm


Josef Albers taught basic curriculum at the Bauhaus, then emigrated to the USA in 1933 where he wrote his greatest work, Interaction of Colours.
This report, which is published here for the first time, was ordered by the US Office of the High Commissioner for Germany and was designed to help the authorities assess and control cultural and political developments in Germany. Albers takes this opportunity to make a compact sketch of aesthetic phenomena viewed through his background in anthropology and perception theory. The report reads like an abstract of the Interaction of Colours, providing an excellent insight into the initial phase of the basic curriculum at the Ulm School of Design.


REPORT ON A COURSE IN BASIC DRAWING DESIGN AND COLOR GIVEN AT THE HOCHSCHULE FÜR GESTALTUNG IN ULM

by Josef Albers

Submitted to:
OFFICE OF THE HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR GERMANY
Office of Public Affairs
Cultural Attache’s Office

Copies to:
Geschwister-Scholl-Stiftung

January 20, 1954


        I. Introduction
From the correspondence which I had before coming to Ulm with both the US Government and the Geschwister-Scholl-Stiftung, Hochschule für Gestaltung, the establishment of which was made possible by a donation of 1 million DM out of the McCloy Fund, I concluded that my main task would be to advise the Hochschule für Gestaltung as to curriculum organization and teaching in the following spcialized fields which areconsidered here as  basic training: basic drawing, basic color, and basic design. The courses were given every week day morning from 8:15 to 11:30, except Saturdays. Besides these class hours of practical eercises I frequently went to see the students in the afternoons when they did their home workand also visited the work shops of the department of industrial design. Several times I visited the building grounds on the »Kuhberg«, until bad weather prevented the continuation of construction.

Shortly after my arrival in Ulm and repeatedly during my stay here I had conferences with members of the Board of Directors, as Rechtsanwalt Helmut Becker, Kressbronn, Dr Roderich Graf Thun, Jettingen, and Oberbürgermeister Pfizer of Ulm, and with future teachers on the program of the school.

Before going into the details of my experience I should like to explain the principles of my teaching method, in particular why my methods differ from the traditional methods in teaching art.


        II. Principles Underlaying my Courses at the Hochschule
The longer I teach the more I learn that art cannot be taught, at least  not directly. Art – as I see it – is visual formulation of our reaction to teh world, the universe, to life. If such definition is acceptable, the two basic aspects we have to deal with in teaching arts and in which we can offer help are seeing and formulating, or vision and articulation. That the development of these faculties provides tasks for more than a life time has been stated repeatedly by the masters. Since vision and articulation are the parents of the art, self-expression in art, which is to reveal purposely something through visual formulation, is possible only at an advanced level, that is, after vision is developed and after articulation is aquired, at least to some extent.
Consequently, self-expression is not the beginning of art studies. I am aware that many art teachers are not sympathetic to such conclusions. I come to my conclusions through the following premisos:
As there is no verbal communication before we can produce sounds and words, and as there is no writing before having letters or types, for the same reason there is no visual communication as long as there is no visual articulation.
Nobody considers inarticulate sounds of a child a language, and nobody accepts his scribblings as writing. But curiously enough many are inclined to accept such scribblings as self-expression and so – as art. But finally art teachers are beginnung to discover that self-expression is something else than self-disclosure.
Following my conclusions, I do not believe in self-expression as the first or the principal objective of art studies. We will understand this better in applying the German educational terms »Beschäftigungstrieb« (the urge to be occupied), and  »Gestaltungstrieb« (the urge to formulate, to build).
Compare also the usual art teaching with teaching in other fields, imagine the four »R«s taught without directions, without systematic training; or language, history and music studies consisting only of self-expression without systematic and continuous exercises.
It is a psychological error to believe that art stems from feeling only. Art comes from the conscious as well as from the subconscious – from the both heart and mind. If art is order, it is intellectual arder as well as intuitive or instinctive order. Unfortunately there are people, teachers and students, afraud of the training of the conscious in art, afraid of the understandable in art. For those I should like to say that clear thinking will not and cannot interfere with genuine feeling; but it does interfere with prejudices, so often misinterpreted as feelings – and that’s all to the good. As in any other field of human endeavour, so it is worth while also in art to see and to think clearly. In teaching art, particularly basic design – I have tried to organize a method which provides a preparation for all visual art, a practical study of principles underlying and connecting all arts.
Before going into details it might be interesting to see first how architecture for instance – and in a similar way also typography – have regained a significant and leading cultural position, more, probably, than any other branch of art today.
Since the Beaux-Arts system is abandoned, sonce retrospective analysis and copying of ancient achievements are no longer the beginning nor the the dominating concern of architectural apprentices, since present needs and new as well as old possibilities of construction are the point of departure and the main content of study, a contemporary new architecture is growing again – performed in our own articulation, demonstrating our mentality.


         III. The Courses
         a) Basic Design
         b) Basic Drawing
         c) Basic Color
         IV. Final Comments


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