Jasper
Johns: Recent Work
1982-1986
Art History has pinned Jasper Johns to a specific place and time, placing him as a transitional figure between the Abstract Expressionists and the Pop artists. It is true that his distinctive voice enters the discourse of 20th century art at this point, and the work he created in the 1950s and 60s seemed to make an important divergence from the idealistic block of the New York school. Flag (1955) (fig. 1) was an important and influential painting, and a lot has been said about it. However, in an attempt to understand what his work is really about, it is important that we do not end his career with its beginning. Johns has been called a philosophical and intellectual artist, and in the course of the creation over the last five decades, he has continued to address the nature of art, engaging in the controversial issues of the century, from cubism to anti-art (by creating works that seem to negate both traditional representation and notions of personal expression), and opening up new possibilities. It is an intriguing enterprise to see where the process of creation has taken him philosophically over five decades and thus, what it has meant for his art.
This can be achieved by closely analyzing and
scrutinizing these experimental and fresh recent works that seem to go back and
readdress his early work, providing a self-referential critique as a
counterpoint to the scholarship of Flag and the art that has been produced in
its wake.
A simple snapshot evaluation of Racing Thoughts
(1983) (fig. 2), a characteristic recent work, reveals the most intriguing
qualities of Johns’ recent work in general.
Disembodied faces stare out: the Mona Lisa, a
black and white photograph of gallery owner Leo Castelli, a
skull-and-crossbones warning sign. Each is seemingly wrenched out of context
and uneasily placed in the new context of the painting. Layers hang over
layers. The warning sign is overlapped by a Barnett Newman print. As indicated
by the title, these images donÕt seem fixed. One moment they seem flat, the
next they pop out, floating around and producing a strange energyÑfighting
against the nails and tape that try to hold them down to the canvas.
These identifiable images are touchstones in a
strange and incongruous environment. Colors are rich and unnatural. Johns seems
to be harkening back to the beginning of the century, when artists began
exploring the possibilities of seeing the world from many different
perspectives. This is art about the act of seeing.
Household objects indicate the still-life
tradition, and a story is being toldÑa scenario can become clear. Perhaps we
are lying in the bathtub, staring at the wall. MatisseÕs works after Red Studio
(1911) provide an interesting parallel. These works can hang together as
ÒroomsÓ in the world of representation but also disperse into their component
partsÑflat objects arranged on canvas.
Imagination becomes objectified, the wall
acting as a canvas in the mindÕs eye. Projected onto the picture plane,
however, there is no concrete distinction between the thought and the wall.
There is only one flat plane. If we attempt to discern the scene as a realistic
representation, it doesnÕt work. Elements canÕt be explained. The ÒwallsÓ
change across the space of the canvas, becoming more and more abstractÑnow
familiar wood grain, now a foreign complex of shapes in ominous outlines. In
Ventriloquist (1983) (fig. 3), various pots appear scattered around the canvas,
literally floating in mid-air.
There are endless possibilities for seeing that
we consciously or unconsciously oscillate between. The power of these paintings
is that they work on these multiple layers. The mood produced by this painting
is a dreamlike immediacy, a desperation created by uneasy symbols rising out
from the cracks. How are we meant to interpret the elements of this strange
melange? Is there a meaning to grasp? What do these images (thoughts?) signify?
Works in series often move from the simple to
the complex, as artists become more facile and experimental with familiar
methods and material. Perhaps we
can go back to the art created before in order to determine a strategy for
attacking a piece like Racing Thoughts. What led Johns to this place and not
another?
Before paintings such as Racing Thoughts and
Ventriloquist, Johns spent eight years during which his primary works were the
crosshatch paintingsÑabstract pieces consisting of contrary patterns arranged
on a grid. Viewing Racing Thoughts from a compositional perspective, it seems
to take off from where these crosshatch works began. The canvas itself is
divided into uneasy halvesÑa formal division that seems more consistent with
the abstraction of pattern manipulation than the description of a space.
However,
in order to truly evaluate Racing Thoughts in the context of JohnsÕ entire
career, it would be unthinkable to go without considering the implications of
Flag, the work that sparked the rest.
In 1955, Johns painted Flag, a full-size flag
replica in encaustic on canvas. It is at this point that JohnsÕ considerations
of representation began. In many ways, the history of modern painting is a
history of preoccupation with the picture plane, and Flag exists completely
without perspectiveÑit is not a Òwaving flag.Ó There is no story being told. In
fact, there is nothing to separate the image of Flag from an actual Flag. It
should be viewed in the same context. It is thus non-representational. Like the crosshatch works, it can be
thought of as a pattern. It is able to exist as a completely objective image,
separated from an artistÕs placement of ÒmeaningÓÑhere is no border, no
context.
Also, it is a ÒstolenÓ image, but it is not a
ready-made. Instead, it was painstakingly recreated on canvas with a modified
encaustic techniqueÑa technique that is difficult and deliberate and
specifically reveals each brushstroke. In other words, the audience cannot
escape the artistÕs intention to create Flag. Though appropriated, it is
clearly an art object. This alone separates it from a ÒrealÓ American flag. The
image is the same, but this flag cannot be flown. It is non-functional.
Instead, it is art.
Why was the image of the flag chosen? It is an
image that cannot have any personal significance. Johns seems to be saying that
art is a process of creation, but not an imposition of meaning. This is a
direct challenge to the authority of the Abstract Expressionists, who attempted
to pour their souls into the painting. Johns is indicating that this art object
is not expressive on any level. Meanings are transitoryÑthey cannot be pinned
down. Interpretation is subjective. Art exists objectively.
Every instinct of the paintingÕs creation is
contrary to personal expression. The reverence of his careful encaustic
technique, for instance, is drastically different from the quick, splashy
techniques of a Pollock. Significant, also, is its difference from the
techniques of the Pop Artists, who also rejected personal expression and
utilized familiar images, like the flag. They were irreverentÑanti-art. Warhol
used cheap, reproducible materials and his work contained no trace of his hand.
JohnsÕ
works exists in between the two impulses, not just in time but also in
philosophy. Just as he was arbitrary about his choice of subject matter, he was
obsessive about using it. Like most of his contemporaries, he works in series.
In other words, he works out ideas in a deliberate way. Flag was only the
beginning. Johns enjoys taking the familiar and changing it, further revealing
the process of artistic creation, but still negating the possibility of
meaningÑthe flag was multiplied, then obscured in thick white and grays,
dripping in wax; one version has sixty-four stars. Year after year, he
continued the process. Subject matter became more and more diverse (moving from
objects to color itself in False Start
(1959) to the device pieces, which reveal seemingly arbitrary processes
of creation) and treatments became more and more complex assemblages, unified
in creation by a commonly quoted Johns maxim:
Take
an object
Do
something to it
Do
something else to it
Do
something else to it
In 1982, Jasper Johns painted In the Studio
(fig. 4), a work that saw him return to figurative material after a decade long
period of focusing on the
ÒcrosshatchÓ works. This was also his first work with perspective. The
title indicates we are looking at a wall of JohnsÕ studio, and we see a blank
canvas in the lower quadrant of the picture, apparently Òtilted.Ó Actually
tilted is a long stick, hinged to the bottom of the picture, which pivots out
from the canvas. Hanging on the wall is a picture of an arm dappled in primary
colors, mirrored by an actual replica cast arm nailed to the canvas, positioned
above the stick. The splotchy patterns of the arms mimic a recently completed
cross-hatch painting, Between the Clock and the Bed (1981) (fig. 5) hanging to the right in two versions, one
dripping down in the runny wax of heated encaustic. Paint splatters and
cubist-inspired faux nails (which mimic the actual nails pinning the cast arm)
heighten the effect of the shallow perspective with cartoon-like iconography
(later to be used in the furniture of the ÒbathroomÓ paintings).
Initial impressions: a loose conglomeration of
objects, containing the endless variation of all his work (two arms, two
paintings, two ÒtiltingsÓ). However, this is JohnsÕ first painting with
perspectival space, and thus his first painting with a clear possibility of a
subjective space, which he so forcibly negated in Flag. This painting does not
feel arbitrary, but it is very ambiguous. Johns does not wish to Òtell a
story.Ó This ambiguity seems to conceal a hidden meaning. While a Flag can be
described in formal attributes, “loneliness” cannot. It must be inferred
through pathos.
This painting pre-dates Racing Thoughts by only
one year, and in that time, a new complexity emerged. Instead of tension, In
the Studio features a sense of calm distance between elementsÑa detachment that
could be read as variously serene or melancholy. The artist is away, but his
spirit lives on through his creationÑthe arms feel like proxies for the artist,
though they are the cast-arm of a child.
Like Racing Thoughts, there is a dreamlike
quality to the paintingÕs ambiguity, though this is not as intense an
experience. Images appear distinct, but do not yet Òpop out.Ó The colors are
fairly innocuous, but white also charges the negative spaceÑthis is a bright
space.
Now in the realm of perspective, though meaning
is unclear, we feel more obliged to interpret the material. Flag was not meant
to be interpreted. It simply was. Why is Johns now creating work that seems to
call out for interpretation? How can these works be reconciled with the
prohibition against personal expression and representation?
In Racing Thoughts, Mona LisaÕs mysterious
smile, a symbol of enigma and mystery, is taped into the space of a room. The
young Leo Castelli is projected onto the wall as well, his face hidden behind a
mask of jigsaw patterns (the jigsaw a palatable metaphor for JohnsÕ endeavor),
and behind this, the hazy grouping of enigmatic forms. What separates the
figures from the ground? It is the immediate recognition of them as distinct
objects. The distinction between seeing flat lines and seeing objects is
something the observer does. A painting is objective, but any viewing of it is
a purely subjective enterprise. ItÕs only natural that paintings be enigmatic
and puzzling. They are illusions by definition.
Objectivity is hard to hold on to. By creating
a subjective space, Johns concedes a gradual process in his work that has
undermined his denial of expression, for better or worse. For some reason, for
most of his career, Johns did not care to create purposively expressive work.
However, after years of reproducing the same images, his flags and Savarin
coffee cans became cherished companions instead of impersonal forms. They
seemed to gain a personal meaning if one was not there to begin with. Johns
asked us to see a painting as a flag. Now he is finally acknowledging his
personal stake in his subject matter by allowing us to see a Flag in a
painting, containing in this context every possibility of meaning he has denied
it.
If JohnsÕ art is concerned with how we see,
then representation opens up a whole new can of worms. We can see Flag in a
painting, but we may still see it as a pattern. Of course, these pieces would
not be possible in 1955. They reflect a dramatic changeÑopening up
possibilities of seeing, though they do not negate earlier work. The
possibility of seeing things subjectively opens up a possibility of seeing
things wrong, and the existence of meaning does not mean that this meaning will
be clear. Interpretation of artistic expression is still a risky business.
Thus, JohnsÕ paintings seem to prohibit a clear interpretation. He takes into
account the limitations of personal expression, and chooses to paint pictures
that are still interesting as optical illusions and enigmas with ambiguous
meanings, though they may be supported by preferences to objects that hold some
personal significance to the artist that may or may not be apparent.
One gets the impression the artist is leaving
clues lying around, as if to say that expression is not impossible, but it
simply cannot be handed out on a silver platter. Artist and viewer must connect
tenuously on a level of flat canvas. Keys to meaning will reveal themselves
slowly. Strange new strategies become clear in an instant only to disappear
back into the picture plane in the next.
Hence the complex puzzles in JohnsÕ recent
work. Flat patterns, dating back to Flag, are applied as skins in these new
perspective pieces that function on multiple levels. The crosshatch patterns,
inserted in the context of In the Studio, represent a puzzle to be solved.
These crosshatch patterns are mimicked by the dappled colors of the arms.
Motifs repeat across the canvasÑreasserting the dreamlike quality of repetition
and transformation.
The
extent to which puzzle and enigma enters the work can be found in In the
StudioÕs striking counterpoint: Perilous Night (1982) (fig. 6). Though the
compositions and elements of the two are similar, their mood is completely
different. In the Studio is light and clear, Perilous Night dark and haunting.
The plaster cast arms in three different sizes
once again introduce a human element, but in Perilous Night they seem painfully
disembodied and real. If these subjective works contain a meaning, what is the
story being told in Perilous Night? Can the clues be found hidden in the
canvas?
An element that Perilous Night shares with
Racing Thoughts is the outlined shapes taking up the ÒwallÓ in most of the left
of the canvas. Scholarship has revealed them to be tracings of the Isenheim
Altarpiece by GrŸnewald, although this is more apparent in Perilous Night than
in Racing Thoughts, where the image has been further distorted with shadings
reminiscent of the crosshatch works.
Johns reveals the arduous path from abstraction
to representation to explicit meaning, and meaning is never made explicit in
these works. By taking representational material (in this case, two soldiers
from GrŸnewald) out of the context of the original painting and placing it in a
new context, it may function as a pattern until one becomes aware of it. Thus,
while Flag moves on to the level of representation, another image takes the
place of Flag. Perilous Night can only be ÒunderstoodÓ by an audience that
knows more about the painting than is immediately visible, but it seems that if
understanding a painting has changed from understanding its objective image and
construction to understanding subject matter, it can never be fully understood
by the audience. How are a perilous night, the John Cage score, disembodied
arms, and a GrŸnewald quote related? It is unclear. This is a deliberately
ambiguous work, and that adds to the desired mood of unease and peril.
These emotions are expressedÑthe transition
from art about art to art about the artist is clear. Anything inferred about a
painting is in some way an inference about the artistÕs psychological state as
well.
Self-portraiture
Hanging on the wall in In the Studio is a
crosshatch painting from 1981 called Between the Clock and the Bed. It is
interesting that Johns chose the title because it is an apparent reference to
the well-known Munch self-portrait which features bed sheet patterns not unlike
JohnsÕ own patterns.
Though
the crosshatch works are difficult to interpret, as they progressed, an
interesting shift appeared on the surface of these works. His titles (such as
Dancers in a Plane (1979) and Between the Clock and the Bed) began to describe
representational situated, and seem to ask to be deciphered through the surface
of crosshatch marks. It is an intriguing move to consider Between the Clock and
the Bed as a kind of self-portrait under the surface. The three panels of the
work act as a kind of analogue to the three components of the Munch workÑclock,
self-portrait, and bed. As if to confirm this assumption, the Tantric Detail
series (1980-81) (ex. fig. 7) places a skull and ominous pair of Philip Guston
inspired cartoon testicles in the center of a crosshatch paintingÑthe artist
speaking from within the canvas.
It seems that the works beginning with In the
Studio simply take off from this premise. If a series of abstract lines and a
cartoon skull can act as a self-portrait, then anything can. Instead of leaving
keys to some hidden meaning, the only meaning of JohnsÕ more subjective pieces
was a simple addition of himself as the subject.
In the Studio takes place in JohnsÕ studio, and
Racing Thoughts takes place in JohnsÕ bathroom. The objects floating in
Ventriloquist actually exist in his house. Each painting is fundamentally the
expression of the artistÕs personality. The artist attempts to describe his
world through the things he encounters and holds on to. He is allowed to enter
the painting in the charged space between objects. With the introduction of
representation, there is the possibility that each element, holding a personal
significance, is a stand-in for himself.
Though these works can easily be compared to
still-lifes, they double as Òself-portraits.Ó In this way, the only story being
told is the process of JohnsÕ careerÑthe creation of art that appears ambiguous
and arbitrary, a unique expression of the artistic endeavor. The objective qualities
are all JasperÕs discretion. We must also keep in mind his intentions, and the
process of artistic creation as we analyze it. However, we are the only judges
of meaning since each viewing of a painting is necessarily subjective.
Instead
of seeing these works as strange puzzles of a hidden past (the Rosebud syndrome
that writers such as Jill Johnston endorse), it is far more interesting to see
the Òstrange puzzlesÓ as possible signifiers of meaning. In this way, it is
unessential to understanding what Perilous Night Òmeans,Ó or to ÒunderstandÓ
the reference to GrŸnewald. Instead, Johns allows to interpret the references
ourselves. The dream-like quality of these works indicates that we should use
our dreams to attempt a translation. His re-appropriation of otherÕs art in a
new and subversive context (altarpiece as wallpaper) indicates we should
re-appropriate his art for our own purposes.
Johns went on to create a series of
paintings that seems to confirm this Òexpression via self-portraitureÓ theory and
also to implicate more possibilities of hidden, personal meaning than any prior
work.
The
Seasons (1985-1986) (figs. 8-11) is a huge series of sequential works in
encaustic. They feature the first human representation in a Johns painting, and
it is now self-evident that he intends it to be a self-portrait, as this huge
shadow appearing in the center of each panel is indeed the artistÕs own outline
The Seasons is a treasure trove of
possibilities, referencing each phase of JohnsÕ career, and presenting new
quotes from the history of art.
The
Seasons is concerned with movement through time, with each panel portraying
characteristics of a specific season (rain for spring, snow for winter, etc.)
and each containing different elements from JohnsÕ ever-widening palette. A
version of the device circle utilizing a human arm cycles like a clock face is
prevalent in each panel. There are cross-hatch works, a hidden GrŸnewald image,
Flag, and the pots and warning sign of Racing Thoughts. There are also optical
illusions, such as the duck/rabbit, and the wife/mother-in-law and appropriated
images from other artists, such as the Mona Lisa and the Duchamp self-portrait
in profile, as well as a variety of Picasso quotes.
It
is hardly necessary to attempt to dissect each reference. Although this is a
densely visual work, it is not engaged in the optical illusions of Racing
Thoughts. While Perilous Night and In the Studio seem terribly ambiguous (the
GrŸnewald detail simply not providing a viable explanation), and Racing
Thoughts can be dissected as a narrative but doubles back into the picture
plane, The Seasons is fairly straightforward.
JohnsÕ
work of the early 1980s opened up the possibility of a progression from
abstraction to an explication of meaning, shifting from a general concern with
seeing art objectively to seeing the expressive artist as the subject of the
work.
The
artist, revealed in Tantic Detail as an ominous skull, is now presented as an
ominous shadow, looking through a doorway into his own memory. Like in Racing
Thoughts, in which the thoughts of an instant are projected onto the picture
plane, held together by a primitive rope, the memories of a lifetime are
assembled around the artistÑthe canvas functioning as a map of the mind.
Explicitly,
The Seasons presents the life of artist, who weathers the process and progress
of time. In Spring (fig. 8), the shadow of the artist is mirrored by the shadow
of a young boy and surrounded by childish illusions (wife/mother-in-law and
duck/rabbit). In Summer (fig. 9) are the mature illusions of Johns the
artistÑFlag, images from Ventriloquist and Racing Thoughts, as well as
appropriated images that have become part of his self-portraiture over time. In
Fall (fig. 10), the possibility of death arises in the form of the
skull-and-crossbones warning sign. The pots, which floated in Ventriloquist,
now fall, and the rope snaps. Finally, Winter (fig. 11) closes the series with
the clearest depiction of a seasonÑit is snowing and a snowman appears in
outline. We are left with a sense of rest, completion.
JohnsÕ work can be summed up in one word:
process. A life, an artistic discourse, or the creation of a specific series,
it can all be summed up:
Take
an object
Do
something to it
Do
something else to it
Do
something else to it
Perhaps
JohnsÕ decision to change the emphasis in the early 1980s was created by an
acknowledgement that he was growing older and, as part of looking back upon a
life in art, he decided to re-open doors that had previously closed.
The Seasons is about this process. And it is
certainly a clear expressive piece for an artist who once seemed to negate the
possibility of expression. The works between Between the Clock and the Bed and
The Seasons were engaged in this subtle processÑmoving slowly away from
abstraction toward traditional forms of representation and expression. Though
all the elements of abstract works are included in The Seasons, they are
marginalized. The Seasons is predominated by the kind of simple narrative clues
that allow a real entry into the world of explicit expressive meaning.
A
snapshot of Jasper JohnsÕ works between 1982-1986 reveals an artist still very
much willing to experiment, each painting stretching the boundaries between
Flag and In the Studio even further until reaching The Seasons. The linear
progression of
Between
the Clock and the Bed
Tantric
Detail
In
the Studio
Perilous
Night
Racing
Thoughts (and Ventriloquist)
The
Seasons
reveals
the roots of The SeasonsÕ concerns expression arising from the seemingly
abstract Between the Clock and the Bed. A simple representation arose from a
series of arbitrary lines and at the end of the process each arbitrary
abstraction could be accounted for as an element of self-portraiture in the
complex of The Seasons. In other words, images eventually made the transition
from object to subject, but Johns has us keep in mind that they can still play
both roles. Can this move be made congruent with JohnsÕ early philosophy? If
Johns was fundamentally prompted to create Flag out a concern to explore new
ways of seeing and his artistic career is an obsession with this necessarily
experimental endeavor, then emphatically ÒYes!Ó Just because Flag was not meant
to be expressive does not mean that Johns was incapable of showing his
emotional/expressive side. It just took him a long time to find the right
context and the right stepping stones. This is simply another reason not to end
a history of Johns with Flag. Although influential, it does not exhaust the
possibilities of Jasper JohnsÕ artistic discourse.
Note:
Consult Jill JohnstonÕs Privileged
Information (1996) for a lengthy discussion of the uncovering of these images,
and possible biographical readings of this material
Facts about The Seasons are taken from
Michael CrichtonÕs monograph Jasper Johns (1994).