On Tideland

Josef Albers, On Tideland, 1947-1955, oil on fiberboard, 27 ¹⁄₄ x 36 in. (69.2 x 91.5 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.1

Artwork Details

Title: On Tideland
Artist: Josef Albers
Date: 1947-1955
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: 27 ¹⁄₄ x 36 in. (69.2 x 91.5 cm.)
Credit Line: Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost
Mediums: oil
Mediums Description: oil on fiberboard
Classifications: Painting
Subjects: Abstract — geometric
Object Number: 1986.92.1
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1986.92.1

Artwork Description

The playful asymmetry of On Tideland results from Albers’s use of only three colors: gray, ochre, and a rosy orange. The large gray “background” has a blue cast when adjacent to ochre and seems to recede in space, but that same gray in the smaller vertical forms seems to take on a different hue when placed beside the pinkish orange. Meanwhile, the gray rectangle on the right appears to be twice as wide as the one on the left, although in fact it is three times broader, and reveals Albers’s goal to examine the “exciting discrepancy between physical fact and visual effect.”

Modern Masters: Midcentury Abstraction from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2008