Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror

Sept 29, 2021–Feb 13, 2022

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Mirror/Double

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This gallery explores Jasper Johns’s deep fascination with the twinned concepts of the mirror and the double, which inspired this retrospective’s title, Mind/Mirror, and its unique bipartite structure in Philadelphia and New York. Sometimes Johns explores these ideas in works that depict pairs of objects or that are structured symmetrically so they mirror themselves internally. In other cases, he plays with doubling in versions of a work by executing it in different palettes, materials, or sizes. The relationship between objects grows even more entangled when Johns inverts the figure and background in a composition or reverses it from left to right or top to bottom, as in the aptly named paintings Mirror’s Edge (1992) and Mirror’s Edge 2 (1993).

The unusual architecture and installation of this gallery are designed to emphasize the uncanniness of Johns’s echoes and reflections. Four pairs of objects hang in the corners of the room, at ninety-degree angles, as though reflecting one another, while a kaleidoscopic structure mirrors views across the space. At the center of the room sits Painted Bronze (1960), one of an edition of two that features a pair of cast ale cans—the other is on view in Philadelphia. At first glance, the duo of cans seems identical, but close observation reveals they are imperfect copies of one another and of the commercial product they depict. Like Painted Bronze, all of Johns’s experiments with reflections and doubles invite this type of heightened attention so that one senses oneself in the act of perception, a key characteristic of his art.

The corresponding gallery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art also focuses on reflections and doubles.

  • Tall rectangular painted collage, including a blueprint, photograph of a solar system, a taped-on abstract painting, and sketched stick figures.
    Tall rectangular painted collage, including a blueprint, photograph of a solar system, a taped-on abstract painting, and sketched stick figures.

    Jasper Johns, Mirror’s Edge, 1992. Oil on canvas, 66 × 44 in. (167.6 × 111.8 cm). Esther Grether Family Collection. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Dorothy Zeidman

  • Tall rectangular painted collage, including a blueprint, photograph of a solar system, a taped-on abstract painting, and sketched stick figures.
    Tall rectangular painted collage, including a blueprint, photograph of a solar system, a taped-on abstract painting, and sketched stick figures.

    Jasper Johns, Mirror’s Edge 2, 1993. Encaustic on canvas, 66 × 44 1/8 in. (167.6 × 112.1 cm). The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Dorothy Zeidman

  • Tessellation of red, yellow, and blue striped patches, with alternating stencil lettering at the bottom edge of the composition reading "DANCERS ON A PLANE JASPER JOHNS 1979", and with spoons, forks, and knives running outside the left and right sides of the painting.
    Tessellation of red, yellow, and blue striped patches, with alternating stencil lettering at the bottom edge of the composition reading "DANCERS ON A PLANE JASPER JOHNS 1979", and with spoons, forks, and knives running outside the left and right sides of the painting.

    Jasper Johns, Dancers on a Plane, 1979. Oil on canvas and partially painted wood frame with objects, 77 7/8 × 64 1/8 in. (197.8 × 162.9 cm). Collection of the artist; on long-term loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2000. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph courtesy the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, New York

  • Abstract view of a colorful interior, with photographs artwork reproductions, and artworks on the walls; two vases; a faucet; and words embedded in the patterned background.
    Abstract view of a colorful interior, with photographs artwork reproductions, and artworks on the walls; two vases; a faucet; and words embedded in the patterned background.

    Jasper Johns, Racing Thoughts, 1983. Encaustic and collage on canvas, 48 1/8 × 75 3/8 in. (122.2 × 191.5 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Burroughs Wellcome Purchase Fund; Leo Castelli; the Wilfred P. and Rose J. Cohen Purchase Fund; the Julia B. Engel Purchase Fund; the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States Purchase Fund; The Sondra and Charles Gilman, Jr. Foundation, Inc.; S. Sidney Kahn; The Lauder Foundation, Leonard and Evelyn Lauder Fund; the Sara Roby Foundation; and the Painting and Sculpture Committee 84.6. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

  • Abstract view of a gray, black, and white interior, with photographs artwork reproductions, and artworks on the walls; two vases; a faucet; and words embedded in the patterned background.
    Abstract view of a gray, black, and white interior, with photographs artwork reproductions, and artworks on the walls; two vases; a faucet; and words embedded in the patterned background.

    Jasper Johns, Racing Thoughts, 1984. Oil on canvas, 50 × 75 in. (127 × 190.5 cm). The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph courtesy the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, New York

  • Wide rectangular composition vertically bisected into two equal halves. The right half is a colorful contour drawing of a figure sitting upright in bed, while the left half mirrors this image but without the linear outlines and rendered in shades of gray, as well as muted red, blue, and yellow.
    Wide rectangular composition vertically bisected into two equal halves. The right half is a colorful contour drawing of a figure sitting upright in bed, while the left half mirrors this image but without the linear outlines and rendered in shades of gray, as well as muted red, blue, and yellow.

    Jasper Johns, Study for Regrets, 2012. Watercolor, colored pencil, ink, collage, and acrylic on paper, 11 1/2 × 17 7/8 in. (29.1 × 45.4 cm). The Menil Collection, Houston, promised gift from the collection of Louisa Stude Sarofim. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Jerry L. Thompson

  • Two smudgy black handprints, pointing left and right in opposite directions, with handwritten arrows and annotations.
    Two smudgy black handprints, pointing left and right in opposite directions, with handwritten arrows and annotations.

    Jasper Johns, Hand, 1963. Lithograph: one stone, 22 1/2 × 17 1/2 in. (57.2 × 44.5 cm). Printed by Zigmunds Priede; published by Universal Limited Art Editions. Edition no. 18/29. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Florence and Joseph Singer Collection, 65.674.5. © 2021 Jasper Johns and ULAE / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

  • Two ale cans.
    Two ale cans.

    Jasper Johns, Painted Bronze, 1960 (cast and painted in 1964). Bronze and oil paint (three parts), 5 1/2 × 8 × 4 5/8 in. (14 × 20.3 × 11.8 cm). Edition no. 2/2. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Leonard A. Lauder Masterpiece Fund. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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