Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror

Sept 29, 2021–Feb 13, 2022

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Printmaking inherently involves reversal and reproduction, two hallmarks of Johns’s art. Throughout his paintings and drawings, he often flips compositions left to right or top to bottom. He mirrors patterns around a seam or impresses surfaces with implements he sometimes leaves stuck to them. All this happens more easily, if not automatically, in printmaking, and over the years his work in that medium has amplified his fascination with these operations on canvas. Without the aid of an offset press, the image on the matrix necessarily mirrors what is printed on the paper, and a plate can just as effortlessly be rotated before the next proof is pulled. But the greater conceptual correspondence between Johns’s printmaking and the rest of his art lies in its essentially systematic and iterative procedures. Johns often works recursively from one painting to the next to the one after that. An image frequently returns—sometimes years and even decades later—in a different size, medium, or palette. Prints both collapse and extend this modality. On the one hand, an individual image may develop over successive discrete campaigns on a matrix, sometimes followed by the sequential superimposition of multiple plates. On the other hand, printmaking allows for the easy unfurling of permutational thinking in contrast to a suite of paintings or drawings, each of which must be started afresh. After a print’s final state is reached and editioned, Johns’s inquisitive temperament often leads him to “do something else” with the matrix. He might try it again in different colors or invert its values, transforming a black image on light paper into its X-ray correlate. Johns tends to avoid the customary practice of canceling a plate after an edition is complete (to ensure no more examples are made), preferring instead to use that matrix as the launchpad for another work. His mind keeps on turning and so does the press.

Jasper Johns, Painting with Two Balls I, 1962. Lithograph, sheet (Irregular): 26 3/8 × 20 1/4 in. (67 × 51.4 cm) Image: 20 3/8 × 16 9/16 in. (51.8 × 42.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the family of Victor W. Ganz in his memory 90.49. © Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Jasper Johns, Figure 7, 1968. Lithograph, sheet (Irregular): 37 1/8 × 30 in. (94.3 × 76.2 cm) Image: 28 × 21 in. (71.1 × 53.3 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Robert Simons 85.46.8. © Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Jasper Johns, Corpse and Mirror, 1976. Silkscreen: thirty-six screens, 42 1/4 × 53 in. (107.3 × 134.6 cm). Printed by Kenjiro Nonaka, Hiroshi Kawanishi, Takeshi Shimada / published by JJ and SPA. Edition no. 17/65. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift from the Emily Fisher Landau Collection, 2020.142. © 2021 Jasper Johns and Simca Print Artists, Inc. / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Jasper Johns, Summer, from The Seasons, 1987. Intaglio: five copperplates, 26 × 19 in. (66 × 48.3 cm). Printed by John Lund, Hitoshi Kido, Craig Zammiello, Keith Brintzenhofe; published by Universal Limited Art Editions. Edition no. 2/73. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the friends of Victor Ganz in his memory, 88.10.2. © 2021 Jasper Johns and ULAE / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Jasper Johns, Ventriloquist, 1986. Lithograph, sheet (Irregular): 42 × 29 1/2 in. (106.7 × 74.9 cm) Image: 36 3/8 × 24 1/4 in. (92.4 × 61.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Print Committee 86.42. © Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Jasper Johns, Bushbaby, 2004. Intaglio, 43 × 30 in. (109.2 × 76.2 cm). Printed by John Lund, Bill Goldston, Phil Sanders, Jason Miller, Bruce Wankel; published by Universal Limited Art Editions. Edition of 55. Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody. © 2021 Jasper Johns and ULAE / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York