In Two maps I, by stripping away all state names, doubling the image and printing it in a ghostly white ink on black paper Johns opens up the map to new aesthetic possibilities. Johns’s works operate by encouraging viewers to see this object anew. As such it is familiar to all Americans – an object that is known, yet not seen. The map of North America the artist adopted for this series of paintings and prints was based on the type used in school text-books. Two maps I is a key work by Johns that powerfully encapsulates his conceptual concerns and processes of working. Lithography afforded Johns an entirely new range of options for further manipulating his imagery, enabling him to enact his dictum ‘Take an object. The need to draw the image in reverse onto the stone, to draw a separate stone for each colour as well as the medium’s capacity for the reworking and reuse of stones in different colours and permutations presented the artist with new ways of working. The artist’s enthusiastic embrace of the lithographic medium from 1960 opened up new creative possibilities for his work. His use of well-known symbols such as the flag, target or map – ‘things the mind already knows and things which are seen and not looked at’ – enables him to explore the operation of images as surrogates for the object world, and the interplay of perception and representation. An artist who is widely read in psychology and philosophy, Johns’s particular interest in the work of Wittgenstein has informed his sustained investigations into the nexus between art, perception and language. This approach brings into focus one of the central concerns of Johns’s practice, namely his interest in the interplay between the object, its representation and the languages of illusion. Johns regularly repeated and reworked his subjects, very often across a range of media, explaining ‘I like to repeat an image in another medium to observe the play between the two: This was to become one of his signature images which he reworked in a series of paintings between 1961–63 and in two lithographs, executed in 1965–6, Two maps land In 1960 Johns added to his repertoire of subjects the motif of the map of North America. Puzzling critics and viewers alike with their commonplace subject matter and impersonal style, these works signalled the return of figuration in American art which in the previous decade had been dominated by Abstract Expressionism. In his first solo show in New York in 1958, he presented a formidable series of paintings of flags, targets, numbers and alphabets. Ross, Howard Sacks and Vesna Todorović Sacks, Katie and Tony Schaeffer, Karen Goodman Tarte, Robbi and Bruce Toll, and two anonymous donors.By the early 1960s Jasper Johns had introduced a new subject matter of mundane, everyday objects into American art. Heyman, Linda and George Kelly, Sueyun and Gene Locks, Richard and Nancy Lubin, Susan and James Meyer, Leslie Miller and Richard Worley, Mitchell and Hilarie Morgan Family Foundation, Lyn M. Caplan, the Robert Lehman Foundation, Marsha and Jeffrey Perelman, and an anonymous donor.Īdditional support is provided by Irma and Norman Braman, Clarissa Alcock Bronfman and Edgar Bronfman Jr., Isabel and Agustín Coppel, Roberta and Carl Dranoff, Jaimie and David Field, Kathy and Richard Fuld, Mrs. Significant support is provided by Constance R. Forman, The Sachs Charitable Foundation, Helen and Charles Schwab, and the Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art-including special gifts from the estates of Patricia Sweet Clutz and Phyllys “Fifi” Fleming. Major support is provided by the museum’s Contemporary Art Committee, The Davenport Family Foundation, Ellsworth Kelly Foundation and Jack Shear, Agnes Gund, Leonard and Judy Lauder, Ms. Dietrich II Fund for Excellence in Contemporary Art, the Annenberg Foundation Fund for Major Exhibitions, the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Fund for Exhibitions, the Robert Montgomery Scott Endowment for Exhibitions, and the Kathleen C. Generous support is provided by Constance Hess Williams and Sankey Williams and Matthew Marks, and through the museum’s endowment with the Daniel W.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |