Table Of ContentJ a s p e r J o h n s
Catherine Craft
Author: Catherine Craft
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© Parkstone Press International, New York, USA
© Confidential Concepts, Worldwide, USA
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ADAGP,
Paris/Succession Marcel Duchamp
Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
© Edvard Munch Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/
BONO, Oslo
© Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA
Art © Robert Rauschenberg/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
All right reserved.
No parts of this publication may be reproduced or adapted without the
permission of the copyright holder, throughout the world. Unless otherwise
specified, copyright on the works reproduced lies with the respective
photographers. Despite intensive research, it has not always been possible
to etablish copyright ownership. Where this is the case, we would
appreciate notification.
ISBN: 978-1-78042-997-7
Catherine Craft
Jasper Johns
Contents
Acknowledgments 7
I. Being an Artist 9
II. The Changing Focus of the Eye 49
III. Not Designed, But Taken 113
IV. Dropping the Reserve 167
V. Grace 221
Notes 250
Bibliography 252
List of Illustrations 254
6
Acknowledgments
Writing this book has been both a challenge and a pleasure, and a number of individuals provided
information, support and encouragement to me along the way. In particular, I must thank Richard
Shiff, who initially contacted me about this monograph and whose example as a scholar of Jasper Johns’s
work has been invaluable. I would also like to thank Nan Rosenthal, who kindly invited me to speak on Johns’s
work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Richard Shone, who as editor for The Burlington Magazinehas
also given me the opportunity to write about Johns’s work on several occasions. Richard Field, Harry Cooper,
Joachim Pissarro, Paul Cornwall-Jones and Tamie Swett have also generously shared their thoughts on Johns’s
work with me over the years, and Johns’s curator, Sarah Taggart, has been unfailingly helpful and very attentive
to my questions. Nancy Carr was the ideal reader, taking the time not only to read my manuscript but to offer
many constructive comments, and Alfred Kren and the rest of my family have shown great love and patience
during this project. Lastly and most importantly, I wish to thank Jasper Johns for his support of this monograph
and for making a body of work with an undeniable sense of life.
7
8
Being an Artist
I wondered when I was going to stop “going to be” an artist and start being one.1
Painters are not public but rather are born in private. The public has made it their business; however, for
the painter, art will never be public.2
One evening in January 1958, Catharine Rembert, an art instructor from the University of
South Carolina, was on a visit to New York, waiting for a former student to join her for
dinner. Jasper Johns came late, but he made up for it by jubilantly picking her up and
dancing her about the room. He was celebrating an astounding success: at twenty-seven years of
age, his first solo exhibition had just opened at the Leo Castelli Gallery, landing him on the cover
of Art Newsmagazine and prompting the Museum of Modern Art to purchase three of his works
– a development that had occurred just that day.
The critical and commercial success of Johns’s first show is something of a legend in the history
of American art, and deservedly so. At a time when the dominant mode of painting, Abstract
Expressionism, emphasised expressive drama through boldly gestural brushwork and largely
abstract compositions, Johns’s paintings of the American flag, targets, numbers and the alphabet
marked a decided departure from convention. Despite being painted with obvious care, they
seemed emotionally reticent, cool and quiet, far from the emotional fireworks then fashionable.
Abstract Expressionism’s first generation of artists, which included such legendary figures as
Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko, had begun making art during the difficult
years of the Depression and World War II. In response to these circumstances, they stressed the
centrality of the artist’s self in the creation of art, and the production of a painting as an act of page 4: Pyre 2, 2003.
Oil on canvas with wood slat, string, and
absolute personal authenticity. As a younger generation came on the scene in the 1950s, many
hinge, 168.3 x 111.8 x 17.1 cm.
of them adopted these attitudes, and soon what had been a position of existential significance The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
began, through repetition, to seem mannered and overwrought. In this climate, Johns’s debut was Fractional and promised gift of Marie-Josée
and Henry R. Kravis.
both a shock and a breath of fresh air.
Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA,
New York, NY
Whereas Abstract Expressionist Barnett Newman had explained that instead of “making
cathedrals out of Christ, man, or ‘life,’” he and his peers were making them “out of ourselves, out page 6: Two Flags, 1959.
Acrylic on canvas, 201.3 x 148 cm.
of our own feelings,”3 and Rothko declared that he wanted viewers to weep before his canvases,
Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig
Johns in contrast remarked in one of his first interviews:
Wien (Vienna), on loan from the Ludwig
Collection, Aachen.
Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA,
It all began... with my painting a picture of an American flag. Using this design took
New York, NY
care of a great deal for me because I didn’t have to design it. So I went on to similar
things like the targets – things the mind already knows. That gave me room to work on page 8: White Flag(detail, actual size), 1955.
other levels. For instance, I’ve always thought of painting as a surface; painting it in Encaustic, oil, newsprint, and charcoal on
canvas, 198.9 x 306.7 cm.
one colour made this very clear. Then I decided that looking at a painting should not
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
require a special kind of focus like going to church. A picture ought to be looked at
Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA,
the same way you look at a radiator.4 New York, NY
9
Jasper Johns
Unlike most artists’ statements in New York during the 1950s, Johns’s remarks contained none of
the familiar talk of doubt and angst, and his selection of subject matter appeared deliberate,
thoughtful, and far removed from emotional attachments and desires. To younger artists his art
seemed not so much cold and unfeeling as clear-eyed and honest after the excesses of Abstract
Expressionism; after all, as artist Mel Bochner later put it, “Where is your true self at age 23?”5
Furthermore, in selecting recognisable subjects, Johns seemed to reject prevailing abstract modes
page 10: Untitled, 1954. of painting, yet his subjects themselves – flags, targets, numbers – each possessed a vital
Oil on paper mounted on fabric, characteristic of classic abstraction, namely, a flatness rendering them all but indistinguishable
22.9 x 22.9 cm.
from the picture plane itself. His work made the polarity between abstraction and representation
The Menil Collection, Houston.
that had dominated debates about modern art for decades seem suddenly obsolete, opening up
Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA,
New York, NY other ways of thinking about art’s relation to the world.
page 11: Star, 1954.
Artists began to respond to Johns’s example almost immediately. One measure of his art’s
Oil, beeswax, and house paint on
newspaper, canvas, and wood with tinted considerable impact is the fact that it affected so many different types of artists. The restrained
glass, nails, and fabric tape, and intellectual qualities of his paintings and his insistence on their identities as physical objects
57.2 x 49.5 x 4.8 cm.
made a strong impression on such artists as Frank Stella, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, and John
The Menil Collection, Houston.
Baldessari, and would contribute to the development of Minimal and Conceptual Art. At the same
Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA,
New York, NY time, Johns’s careful attention to everyday images and objects – “things the mind already knows”
10
