Jasper Johns Retrospective Suggests Bigger Story Waiting to be Told

Jasper Johns b. 1930, United States Follow +

Traversing and transgressing Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Dada, and Pop Art, Jasper Johns has carved a reputation as one of the most innovative post-war gay male artists, alongside canonic figures such as John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Ellsworth Kelly, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol.

Born in 1930, Johns moved to New York in 1953, following a stint in the army, to realise his ambition of becoming an artist. He quickly ingratiated an intimate, creative, and celebrated relationship with Robert Rauschenberg.

Together, the pair departed from the dominant Abstract Expressionist aesthetic of the period by incorporating figurative signs and surface textures from everyday life—flags, targets, branding, and maps—pre-empting Pop Art’s fascination with the mass consumption of imagery while relishing in their purposefully provocative conceptual ambiguities.

Over 500 of such works, encompassing seven decades of practice, will be on view across Whitney Museum of American Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (​​29 September 2021–13 February 2022) in an unprecedented curatorial collaboration.

Whitney’s show—Johns’ most ambitious retrospective to date—includes iconic early works from this period such as Target with Four Faces (1955) and Three Flags (1958).

Deborah Solomon, the artist’s biographer, described how these works ‘rewrote postwar American art by repudiating most everything about abstract expressionism—the splashy emotionalism, the metaphysical longings, the well-rehearsed enactments of agony and ecstasy.’ Instead, they claimed ‘public symbols for the realm of inwardness and private experience.’

Johns is also known for revitalising the encaustic painting technique, where pigment is mixed with beeswax so that visible smears are set into on the canvas—a technique initially used in Ancient Greece to decorate ships.

Standout later works such as Fall (1986) and Untitled (1998) appear calmer, perhaps more sombre, and ethereal than his earlier pieces—yet continue his intentions of blurring the boundary between painting and sculpture, as architectural elements such as string bisect the canvases.

Jasper Johns, Three Flags (1958). Encaustic on canvas (three panels). 78.4 × 116.2 cm overall. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Gilman Foundation, Inc., The Lauder Foundation A. Alfred Taubam, Laura-Lee Whittier Woods, Howard Lipman, and Ed Downe in honor of the Museum’s 50th Anniversary 80.32. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

Known for being highly reclusive, Johns is still making new work from his studio in the small town of Sharon, Connecticut, and regularly showing with gallerist Matthew Marks, who has mounted seven exhibitions since 2005.

An evening auction sale fixture, Johns received the position of the most expensive living artist when mega-collector Steven A. Cohen purchased a 48-star painting, Flag (1958), for USD $110 million in 2010 from Jean-Christophe Castelli, son of the artist’s legendary long-standing dealer, Leo Castelli. A later Flag (1983) sold for USD $36 million at Sotheby’s New York in 2014, marking John’s auction record.

Whitney’s exhibition follows other significant surveys at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2019); The Broad, Los Angeles (2018); and the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2017).

However, Mind/Mirror incorporates never-before-seen works from Johns’ own collection, in addition to many sourced from the Whitney’s 200-strong holdings, indicating a much bigger story remains to be discovered.

Recently, Johns announced exciting philanthropic plans to support the next generation of creatives. He is due to open his 170-acre estate in Sharon for an extended artist residency programme, where 24 artists will make work while staying in the rustic barns and outbuildings around Johns’ rural property. —[O]

Selected Works by Jasper Johns

Main image: Jasper Johns, Racing Thoughts (1983). Encaustic and collage on canvas. 122.2 × 191.5 cm. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photograph by Jamie Stukenberg, Professional Graphics, Rockford, Illinois