Every child knows what a square is: a figure made up of four straight lines of equal length and at the same angle to each other.

A square is drawn and this is a simple exercise.

When you have a line, everything else follows.

One, two, three, four: the construction principle of the square is inherent series production.

The picture series "Homage to the Square" by Josef Albers translates this composition into a program of potentially endless repetition.

The number of squares that Albers interlaces in the homage pictures varies within a narrow range of three to four, but apart from that one has the same thing in front of one another in each picture.

The series comprised more than two thousand individual pieces when Albers died in 1976.

He had been working on it for a quarter of a century.

Patrick Bahners

Feuilleton correspondent in Cologne and responsible for "Humanities".

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A moment of surplus production, of controlled expenditure, does not only lie in the reproduction of the concept.

Every single image offers immeasurably more than the name of the series suggests.

These are not drawings, but paintings.

The square is a symbol of completeness, complete, clear determination that leaves nothing to be desired.

The definition of the geometric figure called square is not incomplete.

But in everyday language, the textbook definition is overlaid by another definition.

We also call a square the area enclosed by four lines of equal length arranged at right angles.

The liveliness of Albers' paintings flows from the tension between the two definitions.

As if drawn by a ghost hand

One geometric fact takes shape in two simultaneously present phenomena.

There is the outline or the scheme, the drawing in the picture.

The lines are created by the fact that the color edges meet.

There are no pencil marks: the squares are drawn as if by magic.

Conversely, there is also the image in the drawing or a sequence of images stacked on top of each other that threaten to go beyond their respective frames.

The visual effects have been described many times, and each time you encounter a painting from the series, they can inspire anew.

The surfaces press beyond the outline construction, flood or undercut the lines, merge with the neighboring surfaces, only to separate again, but not neatly, but in movements of a back and forth like up and down,

which create unstable transition zones of rise and fall of mixed tones and leave spots in the eye.

These are effects of color that Albers applies as evenly as possible, with quasi-industrial precision, to evoke the sight of a sublime natural process, the spectacle of the spontaneous genesis of a creation that differentiates itself.

The square shape is the constant condition of the effect spell, but the play of colors also brings out qualities of the character.

Their painterly potential activates sensations that are inherent in the patterns of perception, as factory settings, so to speak, of our optical apparatus.

The square, viewed as a linear structure or as a surface, evokes contrasting associations.

The drawn figure is governed by the principle of equality and perhaps even promises an even and therefore just world.

The area enclosed by the lines, on the other hand, corresponds to an infinitely larger excluded field.

Seen in this light, there is an irreversible imbalance.

The observer of the Albers squares experiences that his gaze is drawn to the center.

Concentration is rewarded by the impression of immense intensity.

A sacred area cuts out, a realm of the deep opens up.

But soon a bad conscience sets in: the hidden zones are in turmoil, making themselves felt with tremors.