Amateurism is an emptiness and I accept it because it has no preconceived ideas or rules to be applied. This is for me [as art teacher] a most welcom… - Josef Albers

I would say, 'My things have the look of icons.' Unconsciously they look at you not as my face is now – you see me in profile – icons are only this way. And so are my paintings.

I made true the first English sentence [Albers came from Germany] that I uttered (better stuttered) on our arrival at Black Mountain College in November 1933 [right after the closing of the Bauhaus art school in Dessau Germany, by the Nazi's] When a student asked me what I was going to teach I said: 'to open eyes'. And this has become the motto of all my teaching [famous pupils of Josef Albers at Black Mountain College were for instance the young generation starting American artists, like Robert Rauschenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, Cy Twombly, Ray Johnson and Susan Weil.

I want color and form to have contradictorily functions.