One of Alber's most famous quotes is this: “In visual perception a color is almost never seen as it really is — as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art”. Alber asserts that color deceives our perceptions continually and that the same color can evoke innumerable readings. Distinct color effects are made from the contrasting effect of color.

In this artwork, Alber groups different colors together into a sub-component, and then places sub-components of different colors next to each other in order to obtain a contrasting effect. In many of his works, he explores the various color relationships and this idea is central to this assemblage as well. He doesn't group the same color together but instead places some contrasting color between them. Throughout his artworks, he has been experimenting with that contrast but at the same time, he tries to depict order by making sub-components. It is especially interesting how a color affects the intensity and hue of its adjacent colors. For example, the maroon color between the two teal colors near the bottom right. The maroon has a lighter shade and it causes us to perceive the teal as a darker shade than it normally would be. But then, the long strip of maroon in the center seems to have a lighter shade than its counterpart, and this is due to its adjacent light yellow, blue and green colors.

Two main aspects of this work are also the wires placed over the square glass, and the round pieces of glass surrounding by square pieces. The wires are used to cover certain parts of the glass, while leaving others open. While this might seem random at first sight, Albers placed them strategically to give a certain order to the image. Firstly, the wires end up giving the effect of turning the square glasses into grids of sorts. Then, Alber purposefully left some grid squares uncovered, while covering others. For example, the green square in the center has uncovered squares that end up connecting two of its adjacent colors via a path. Another example is the bottom left lightish teal color. The outer wire ring of squares has less thickness while the inner wire squares has a greater thickness. This makes the glass under the inner ring appear darker, due to the effect from the black color of the wires.

Then, we have the 3 round glasses. Notice that none of them are directly surrounded by square glasses of the same color. This once again points to how Alber is aiming to experiment with the contrasting effect of color. The red glass is surrounded by relatively lighter shades of colors, giving it a darkish hue.

In general, I believe Alber hoped to portray a sense of order and experimentation through his glass works. A large part of Alber's life was related to teaching and nurturing students and perhaps he hoped that his visual compositions would be able to allow sensitive viewers to retain those characteristics and ingrain them into their own lives and relationships, thus making the world one giant classroom.