the graphic art of jasper johns

National Art Education Association

The Graphic Art of Jasper JohnsAuthor(s): Burt WassermanSource: Art Education, Vol. 23, No. 6 (Jun., 1970), pp. 16-19Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3191482 .

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The Graphic Art of Jasper Johns Not too many years ago Abstract Expressionism was in full swing. Within the art world, literal figuration was almost out of sight. People wondered loud, "What ever happened to the representational image?" However, picture painting was far from dead. In the early 1950's fleshy looking figures of women, frequently tortured in some state of internal turmoil, took shape in canvases by Willem de Kooning. And then, before long, more and more recognizable subject matter began to appear. Making the scene in the late 1950's, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns presented work in which references to the natural world appeared in rapid succession. Johns' specialty consisted of taking commonplace objects like targets, flags, and stenciled numbers and treating them in such a painterly manner that they ceased to be ordinary things. By the magic of his touch they be- came art.. Little matter what they were to begin with; it was the final outcome-rich in color nuances and tenderly brushed impasto textures-that made the difference. Because Johns used popularly familiar, mass produced objects as sources for his design, he soon came to be looked upon as a prophet of the Pop Art movement. In that role he tried to show that un- expectedly potent qualities of form may reside within the simplest of things. It remained only for the artist to evoke the soul (the esthetic essence) of that object and leave its more mundane existence (its objecthood) behind. Those who longed for the good old days of familiar picture making were struck by visual shock. Johns' art was a composite of action images rather than literal descriptions. They owed more to Abstract Expressionism than to either photography or television. Johns took up printmaking in 1960. By the end of the decade he had completed some 126 pieces of work in such diverse areas as lithography, etching, emboss- ments, and lead reliefs. Most of his graphic efforts, though, were directed toward making multicolor lithographs. A superb opportunity to see his development as a printmaker in retrospect was afforded visitors to the Philadelphia Museum of Art these last few months. More than anything else, Johns has toyed with the shapes of stencil numbers in his lithographs. Apparent- ly, they hold great appeal for him and serve him in two distinct ways. First, they provide him with a ready-



rnade prescription for composition: the numericals divide a surface most agreeably. Second, they serve symbolically as a basis for profound expression: some- how, they get right to the marrow of Western society - to our orientation toward quantity above everything else. In some eerie manner Johns reminds us of our worship of "amounts". Our fascination with money and material measurement of all kinds is devastatingly laid bare with fermented colors and quivering lines. By extension, Johns' preoccupation with "things"-- whether they be a searchlight or a reference to the American flag-manages to confront another basic fact of our society: the concern with objects. Invariably, his pictures present visions in which objects have lost their coldness and matter-of-factness. In a mysterious way Johns invests them with an inner spirit we would normally never attribute to them. Lifeless, impersonal objects become humanly meaningful only because a deeply sensitive man has put something of his personal feelings into them-has given something of himself to them. Only then do they take on qualities that count beyond their materiality. It is the transformation from cold fact to cool art that lends so much significance to Johns' work. Unfortunately, the prints frequently fail where the paintings work out so successfully. Johns is basically a painter. He is at home with gooey, juicy media like oil and encaustic. When he coats a canvas with such luscious materials, the surface takes on rich- ness and depth. But, when he draws upon a litho stone with a crayon or tusche, he is out of his element. Furthermore, when the stones are rolled up with ink and printed on paper, they deposit only thin films of color. Consequently, something very vital that can be found in Johns' canvases, often gets lost in his lithographs. The absence of painterly density makes the difference: the lithographs leave much to be desired because they are so terribly lean. His colors in paint resonate beside each other, but by contrast, his films in ink come off either pretty or prickly-usually in a cheaply decorative kind of way. Unfortunately, they result in graphic prints that are frequently too fragile to really be taken seriously.

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the graphic art of jasper johns

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