CAREER OF JASPER JOHNS EXAMINED IN MAJOR EXHIBITION
First Retrospective in 20 Years Features Late Work Exhibited for the First
Time
Jasper Johns: A Retrospective
October 20, 1996–January 21, 1997
The most comprehensive survey ever held of perhaps the most influential
artist of the postwar era opens at The Museum of Modern Art on October 20,
1996. Jasper Johns: A Retrospective, the first in-depth study of
the artist's work in nearly 20 years, presents four decades of achievement,
from the early paintings of flags and targets that stunned the art world to the
recent densely layered canvases that probe the whole of his career. Until now,
nearly half of the artist's work has never been treated by a
retrospective.
Drawn from public and private collections throughout the world, the
exhibition comprises some 225 paintings, works on paper, and sculptures,
including recent work never before shown to the public. Organized by Kirk
Varnedoe, Chief Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, the exhibition
has its only American showing at MoMA.
On view through January 21, 1997, this exhibition is sponsored by
Philip Morris Companies Inc. Additional support is provided by the National
Endowment for the Arts. An indemnity for the exhibition has been granted by the
Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. The accompanying publications
are made possible by a generous gift from Emily Fisher Landau.
"The Museum of Modern Art recognized Jasper Johns's achievement early in
his career, acquiring three works from his first solo exhibition in 1958,"
remarked Glenn D. Lowry, Director of The Museum of Modern Art. "Now the Museum
is privileged to bring together works from Johns's entire oeuvre, particularly
the second half, which has not beenstudied in context or in depth. We are
particularly grateful that the artist is cooperating completely with the
project and has lent many works from his own collection."
"Jasper Johns changed the course of art in his time," remarked Mr.
Varnedoe. "He is often seen as the `father' of Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptual
art. But beyond the well-recognized, immediate impact of the early paintings
and sculptures as a generative source for the art of the early 1960s, Johns has
provided ongoing inspiration for generations of peers and younger artists of
widely differing aesthetic persuasions."
"Philip Morris is privileged to support this comprehensive retrospective
examining the immensely important career of Jasper Johns," said Stephanie
French, vice president, corporate contributions and cultural programs, Philip
Morris Companies Inc. "Our involvement with the work of Jasper Johns began in
1977, when we sponsored his first major retrospective, and now through this
exhibition, we are once again able to honor Johns's unsurpassed legacy of
innovation, creativity, and artistic achievement."
The Exhibition
Surveying works in all media from 1954 to 1995, the exhibition comprises
approximately 110 paintings, 86 drawings, 17 prints, and 12 sculptures.
Organized for the most part chronologically, certain galleries are devoted to
exploring thematic issues that recur throughout the artist's work. The
exhibition charts Johns's artistic progress through the years, which has been
marked equally by recycling, reinventing, and combining signature images and by
unexpected breaks and shifts in direction.
In 1954, at the age of 24, Johns destroyed virtually all of his prior work,
determined to purge his art of any resemblance to the styles of other artists.
He then began creating the paintings of flags, targets, and numbers that
brought him early fame while sounding the death knell for Abstract
Expressionism, the movement that dominated the international art world at that
time. Unlike the enigmatic gestures that filled the canvases of the Abstract
Expressionists, Johns's art was filled with everyday images shaped by
convention and culture. Concerned with the relationship of thought and sight,
Johns referred to the images in his mid–1950s works as "things the mind already
knows" and also as things that were "seen and not looked at, not examined."
When they filled the picture plane, these early images blurred the line between
art and object. Further separating himself from the action paintings of the New
York School, works such as Flag (1954–55), with their densely worked
encaustic surfaces, were "a sum of corrections," according to Johns, that
showed a concern with "accuracy." Indeed, the labor-intensive works that
comprise the retrospective underscore the concern with craft that has occupied
Johns throughout his career.
In 1958, even as Johns's innovations were being acclaimed throughout the
art world—a magazine cover, his first solo exhibition, purchases by MoMA—his
art was evolving. In 1959 the pictorial field, now often imageless, became
covered with aggressive brushstrokes that had a splashy "expressionist"
intensity in contrast to the reticence of his previous paintings. The act of
painting and the physical properties of the picture—in works such as Device
Circle (1959) and Painting with Two Balls (1960)—became the central
subjects and primary sources of imagery for the art, more than any motif
brought in from common experience.
In the early 1960s a new emotional tone—chill, dark, bleak—entered
Johns's work. Titles of negation, melancholy, or bitterness (No, Liar, In
Memory of My Feelings—Frank O'Hara, all of 1961) underline the altered
mood. The imagery of imprinting and smearing, along with thinned-out passages
of staining paint and crusts of scraped residue, give this art a more troubled
material and psychological life.
In the early 1970s Johns first began working with the abstract cross-hatch
patterns—the clusters of parallel strokes—that would become one of his
favorite motifs. Having glimpsed such markings on a passing car, Johns later
recalled that the pattern "had all the qualities that interested
me—literalness, repetitiveness, an obsessive quality, order with dumbness and
the possibility of complete lack of meaning." And while Johns did use the motif
to convey order, he could also turn it into a comment on the disintegration of
order in works such as Corpse and Mirror (1974). The exhibition
includes the first work that used the motif—the large, four-panel
Untitled (1972)—as well as seldom-seen masterworks such as Scent
(1973–74) and Weeping Women (1975).
Johns's turn to realist figuration after 1980, and his concern in recent
years with the work of other artists and with autobiography, is also shown in
depth, often through individual paintings, pairs, or triads of works not
previously exhibited. Of special note, the exhibition will reunite the four
Seasons paintings of 1985 and 1986. Filled with references to images
that dominated earlier works, including flags, half-circles, and cross-hatches,
the Seasons offer an allegory of Johns's life up to the mid–1980s.
The monumental canvas that closes the exhibition, Untitled
(1992–95), offers a densely layered reflection on Johns's previous four
decades of work. According to Mr. Varnedoe, the work "provides a broadly
inclusive `retrospective' of [Johns's] subjects, marks, and manners, and seems
to constitute not only a `manifest,' in the sense of a shipboard inventory, but
also a `manifesto,' in another—a chart of voyages made and a key to present
location, shaped by the apparent desire for a cumulative self-summation that
has also seemed to spur the other large, synthetic assemblage-paintings such as
According to What of 1964 that Johns has produced to mark previous
points in his development."
Publications
The Museum of Modern Art is publishing two books in connection with the
exhibition. The first, the catalogue to the show, Jasper Johns: A
Retrospective, by Kirk Varnedoe with an essay by Roberta
Bernstein, is the most complete and authoritative book on the artist to date.
In addition to an overview of the artist's career, separate essays examine what
artists of the past have meant to Johns and what Johns has meant to artists of
the present. Published by The Museum of Modern Art. 408 pages. 483
illustrations, including 261 in color and four foldouts. Clothbound, $65.00,
distributed in the United States and Canada by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York,
and paperbound, $32.50.
The second book, Jasper Johns: Writings, Sketchbook Notes, and
Interviews, edited by Kirk Varnedoe and compiled by Christel
Hollevoet, is the first book to present this private figure in his own words.
In material dating from the late 1950s to the present, Johns discusses his
work, describes his relationships with other artists, and analyzes the
problematic aspects of artistic representation and interpretation. Included are
transcripts of filmed and taped interviews that have never been published, as
well as writings and interviews that have appeared in a wide variety of books,
magazines, and catalogues. Among the illustrations are pages from the artist's
previously unpublished sketchbooks. Published by The Museum of Modern Art. 288
pages. 30 illustrations. Paperbound, $24.95, distributed in the United States
and Canada by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York. Both books are available in the
MoMA Book Store.
In addition, the complete Jasper Johns: Bibliography and Exhibition
History will be on The Museum of Modern Art's Web site at
www.moma.org/johns.biblio.html. The documents will be available on disk at The
MoMA Book Store for $5.95.
Travel
Following the MoMA showing, Jasper Johns: A Retrospectivewill travel to the Museum Ludwig, Cologne (March 7–June 1, 1997) and the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (June 28–August 17, 1997). The presentation
of this exhibition at the Museum Ludwig is supported by Ford Motor
Company.
Related Exhibition: Jasper Johns: Process and
Printmaking
This exhibition of approximately 125 proofs and editioned prints provides a
unique opportunity to understand Jasper Johns's creative process in printmaking
as he recycled and refocused his imagery. Spanning Johns's entire career as a
printmaker, some 30 finished works are presented, each with a series of proofs
leading up to it. The works are drawn almost entirely from the artist's
personal collection. On view from October 17, 1996, to January 21, 1997, at
The Museum of Modern Art, the exhibition is organized by Wendy Weitman,
Associate Curator, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books. [Separate
release available.]
Lectures and Special Programs
Artists and art historians will participate in a series of lectures and
panel discussions about Jasper Johns. See separate release for details.
About the Sponsor
Since 1958, Philip Morris Companies Inc. has supported a broad spectrum of
cultural programs that reflect the corporation's commitment to innovation,
creativity, and cultural diversity. Philip Morris's support of the arts
focuses on contemporary visual and performing arts, and is among the most
comprehensive corporate cultural programs in the world. During the past 20
years, Philip Morris has supported numerous exhibitions and visual arts
programs at The Museum of Modern Art, including the acclaimed exhibition
Henri Matisse: A Retrospective (1992) and the last three landmark
exhibitions organized by William Rubin, Director Emeritus, Department of
Painting and Sculpture: Picasso and Portraiture: Representation and
Transformation (1996), Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism (1988),
and Primitivism in 20th-Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the
Modern (1984). In addition, Jasper Johns: A Retrospective marks the
third major exhibition of the
artist's work sponsored by the company. Previous sponsorships include
Jasper Johns: A Retrospective Exhibition (1977) and The Drawings of
Jasper Johns (1991). Philip Morris Companies Inc. has five principal
operating companies: Kraft Foods, Inc.; Miller Brewing Company; Philip Morris
Incorporated (Philip Morris U.S.A.); Philip Morris International Inc.; and
Philip Morris Capital Corporation.
For further information contact Mary Lou Strahlendorff, Department of
Communications, 212/708–9755.
