Mario Naves reviews the exhibition Josef Albers in America: Painting on Paper at the Morgan Library, New York, on view through October 14, 2012.

Naves writes: "The majority of Josef Albers in America is dedicated to informal studies on paper. Covered with scrawled notations, flurried applications of color and grease stains, they reveal Albers’s rigorous methodology at its most approachable. No Platonic exegeses here, thank you; instead we have the remnants of work-a-day life in the studio. The Morgan show allows us to experience Albers as a man given to curiosity and play—and it prompts double-takes."