Arts&Entertainment
Albers’ work teaches through colors
By Josh Nichols
Staff writer
Very few people can develop and
create beautifiil art
Even fewer have the ability to teach
their skill to others and inspire them to
create unique pieces of their own.
This is why Josef Albers, a German
artist and instructor, is considered one of
the most influential people in 20th-cen
tury art.
Twenty prints from Albers’ portfolio
“Formulation: Articulation” are on dis
play through May 7 in the Sheldon
Memorial Art Gallery at the University
ofNebraska-Lincoln.
Dan Siedell, curator and interim
director of the gallery, said this collec
tion of prints is a retrospective look at
Albers’ development as an artist.
“It’s an attempt to encompass ind
give shape to his entire career,” he said.
“Formulation: Articulation” was put
together in 1972, four years before
Albers’ death in 1976.
The folio was done to demonstrate
Albers’ research into line and color.
The exhibit displays numerous
prints from his famous “Homage to
Square” series that began in the 1950s
and continued until his death.
These particular prints show a
square that encompasses a square that
encompasses another square.
Each has a variety of colors, which
serves as the main role of the pieces.
“He’s interested in trying to attain
the purity of visual art in variations and
juxtapositions of color and shape,”
Siedell said.
The combination and use of color
are deceptive in these pieces, which
cause different interpretations and ways
of viewing each piece.
Albers had a fascination with the
idea of interpretation, which is why he
continued to experiment with color.
Quotes from his portfolio are posted
throughout the exhibition.
One quote about his “Homage to
Square” pieces reads, “Seeing several of
these paintings next to each other makes
it obvious that each painting is an instru
ment in its own.
^ He’s interested in trying to attain the
purity of visual art in variations and
juxtapositions of color and shape.”
Dan Siedell
curator and interim director of the Sheldon
i ms means mat tney an are or aii
ferent palettes, and therefore, so to
speak, of different climates. Choice of
colors used, as well as their order, is
aimed at an interaction - influencing
and changing each other forth and
back.”
Before Albers’ fascinations with
shapes and colors spurred his artistic
career, he was an elementary art teacher
for 12 years in the early 1900s.
In 1920, he enrolled at the progres
sive Bauhaus school in Weimar,
Germany.
The Bauhaus was a newly formed
workshop and place of study focused on
merging the separate disciplines of fine
and applied arts.
ror the tirst time, designing a
kitchen utensil was done with the same
amount of interest as the architectural
design of a building.
Albers studied and eventually
taught at the Bauhaus until 1933, when
the school was forced to close.
He was then offered a position at the
Black Mountain College in North
Carolina. He brought his German artis
tic influence and became one of the pre
mier teachers of art in the United States.
He would later head the Department
of Design at the Yale University School
of Art.
As a teacher, Albers influenced
artists such as Robert Rauschenberg.
“Albers was one of the few artists
Josef Alber's
^"Formulation:
Articulation"
WHERE: Sheldon Memorial
Art Gallery. 12th & R streets
WHEN: on display through
• , May 7
COST: free
THE SKINNY: Artist's work
explores theories of color
and formal relations.
who were influential in classroom and
studio as well as in his own work,”
Siedell said. “His influence as a teacher
is perhaps greater than his influence as
an artist.”
Albers did not necessarily teach his
students how to develop art, but instead
encouraged them to open their minds
and develop their own ideas.
“He didn’t create clones but instead
ascribed goals and allowed his students
to achieve these goals,” Siedell said.
“He encouraged them to develop in
their own way.”
Faraway galaxies
come alive in show
■ Howlooseanation will
play jazz, show virtual reality
and give laser light pointers
to audience in “Inspace.”
By Jason Hardy
Staff writer
The science fiction TV series “Star
Trek” boldly proclaimed space as the
final frontier.
The program explored the future and
space travel’s endless possibilities. It
showed American society’s wonder
ment toward the exploration of space
and the emerging technologies of
mankind.
Despite being decidedly grounded,
at least in the physical sense,
Howlooseanation, a local avant garde
performance group, is preparing to take
Lincoln audiences for a similar journey.
“Inspace,” an original performance
piece written by Paul Pearson, isn’t
designed as an exploration of the final
frontier itself, but rather an interactive
romp celebrating pop culture’s enter
taining reactions to space travel.
“Basically, it’s a homage to bad ’40s,
’50s and ’60s sci-fi horror movies,”
Pearson said. “There’s sort of a plot to
this thing, but it’s not important, and
that’s the point. Holes in thd plot don’t
matter. I always liked the look of the
movies better than the stories.”
Loosely speaking, the story is about
a futuristic trip into the galaxy, where the
audience encounters everything from
drag queen robots to the dreaded Vel
Braxx.
“He destroys a planet and kills peo
ple, and at the end the audience gets to
destroy him with lasers, and parts of him
will actually explode on stage,” said
Mark Baldrige, co-director and a mem
ber of Howlooseanation. “It will be a
mess.”
While campy sci-fi films were
known for their simplicity, the techno
logical elements of “Inspace” are far
from simplistic. The hour and a half
show will incorporate about an hour’s
worth of original music, with a virtual
set projected on screens behind the
actors, a levitation act and Lincoln’s first
and only audience-directed laser light
show.
“We’re going to pass out)laser light
pointers to the audience,” Baldrige said.
Pearson said creating how “Inspace”
j5»Howlooseanation
“Inspace”
WHERE :7th Street Loft,
504 S. Seventh St.
WHEN: March 24 & 25
COST: $10
THE SKINNY: Multimedia
performance takes audience
into the next dimension.
looked and operated was about as chal
lenging as it was fun.
“It’s just giving us all a real sense of
play because we don’t have to take it too
seriously,” he said. “It was an opportuni
ty to build little, itty-bitty sets and video
tape them with spaceships on strings,
and then seeing our hands in the video,
that sort of attracted me to it.”
“It’s that Ed Wood sort of stuff that
always had its own charm. But we really
carried it to the nth degree,” Pearson
said.
With such an elaborately abstract
set, Baldrige and Howlooseanation
chose to improvise much of the music.
The other portion is previously com
posed songs Baldrige classifies as “jazz
noise.”
To create this sound, the group incor
porates a number of instruments includ
ing congas, big bass drums, moogs,
theremins and homemade instruments,
as well as saxophones and pianos.
Baldrige said he was confident in *
Howlooseanation’s ability to create an
effective body of music despite the pres
sures of improvised performances.
“We’ve been together for five years,
and we meet once a week for about three
hours and tear this stuff out, so we’re
pretty good at it,” he said. “It’s a lot
about listening to each other, and in
many ways, it’s like a four-way conver
sation.”
Aside from being an interesting
aspect of “Inspace,” Baldrige said the
improvised portion of the music was
essential to the show’s energy. All things
considered, audiences are in for a treat.
“Sometimes the energy level of our
show is hair-raising,” he said. “I think
people sometimes feel electrified, some
times by the shear amount of sound we
can produce, but it’s not about a wall of
noise. We’re able to do a lot of subtle
things mixed in with a lot of chaos.”
“I think audiences will love it. Just
the onstage special effects alone will be
worth the show.”