Tag: jasper johns

In 2010 the National Gallery of Art acquired hundreds and hundreds of trial proofs from Jasper Johns. They document, if not easily reveal, the intricate process of making Johns’ prints, a process Johns has brought into the center of his practice from almost the beginning.

Searching through proofs on the NGA’s website is a bit of a slog, but when this sketch for Leo Castelli’s Little Guys print turned up, I thought I’d better go through the stacks.

And so I found this trial proof for The Seasons, a 1990 ULAE print that is one of the earliest print appearances of the trio of stick figures. And it looks like they travel by themselves. The proof is actually three separate plates from what would be a much larger composition. Coincidentally or not, the other plates contain part of the other stick figure Johns uses, from the UNESCO Picasso.

Whether all prints, or all Johns’ prints, are made this way, I have no idea. But now that you mention it, this print in particular feels very much like that: composed by assembling and setting multiple, prepared plates together like an old timey newspaper publisher. That certainly takes away much of the stress of working images into a 50-inch plate without error or change, I guess.

In any case, the plate with the Little Guys is 4 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches, and notably includes another element, an X marking the spot over to the left, and a line defining their ground.

The Picasso stick figure is embedded in the center of the composition, and all the other figures—the child silhouette, the shadows and inverted shadows from the Seasons paintings read as Johns himself, the Duchamp profile, even the snowman—are integrated as well. But these three stick figures at the bottom seem to still be set apart and doing their own thing, in their own space, even with their own ground to stand on—while still a part of the entire image.

Jasper Johns, The Seasons (trial proof), 1990 [nga.gov]
Previously: Jasper Johns’ Little Guys: Origins

Catching up on Sean Tatol’s always invigorating takes at The Manhattan Art Review, including his review of Jasper Johns’ drawings show at Matthew Marks. Which, like his previous show, includes variations on his 2020 painting, Slice, that got a lot of attention during his double retrospective.

And this line caught me off guard: “He’s apparently announced that Slice is his last painting, and as far as last works go I can’t imagine a more eloquent invocation of mortality and infinity.”

So before getting to the “Wait, what??” let’s cover the, “Yes, and”: Slice certainly is a helluva painting to end on. With themes Tatol observed, rich source images across the board, and a popping backstory that’ll keep people talking, it delivers on multiple planes at once.

And after its star turn in the Whitney/PMA show, Slice was made an anonymous promised gift to MoMA, where the credits for Johns’ reference images expanded in 2023 to include not just ACL doodler Jéan-Marc Togodgue and astrophysicist Margaret Geller, but all Geller’s scientific collaborators on the 32yo Slice of the Universe map she sent the artist unbidden.

But all that said, Wait what? I could neither imagine nor find any context in which Johns would have made such an announcement. So I asked Sean where he’d heard it. And he mentioned a post artist and editor Walter Robinson made last month to two social media platforms: “Jasper Johns (b 1930): ‘MoMA got my first work and MoMA got my last work. Now I’m done.’ A drawings survey opens at Marks on West 24th on Sept 12.”

When reached, Robinson did not say from whom he heard this, or when, but only clarified he didn’t hear it from Johns. Meanwhile, the sound of it is still ringing in my head. “Now I’m done.”

Did Johns decide that after finishing Slice? How’d that go down? How done is he? The newest drawings in the current Marks show date from 2021, the year of the anonymous gift. Is he done with making altogether? The show also includes older works that have never been seen. Has Johns moved to curating? Maybe he’s decided to focus on just revealing stuff now? Let’s start with those little guys, but there is a long list.

Manhattan Art Review: Jasper Johns – Drawings 1982-2021 – Matthew Marks – **** [19933.biz]
@walterrobinsonstudio [threads]

Previously, very much related: Taking A Knee;
Gerhard Richter Painted;
Jasper Johns’ First Flag

I know I’m never going to get a tattoo, but that doesn’t stop me from making a shortlist of tattoos I’d get. And the top Jasper Johns entry on the list are these little guys, with their little rakes, or brooms, or brushes. They’ve been turning up in Johns’s work for decades. They were there in his last drawings show at Matthew Marks, and they’re there again now.

They’re being towered over by an inky armprint, a tracing of Grünewald’s fallen soldier, and torn sheets of John Cage’s pivotal score in a dark and ominous sky, but they’re not daunted. They’re just going about their work, setting the scale, completing the composition. [This watercolor from 1990 predates the first appearance of the little guys in a painting by two+ years, btw. Is this Little Guys: Origins?]

Here they are in 2019, in these little drawings, just as busy as ever, working on the skulls. The 1990 guys look drawn by hand, but these guys, and the skull, are clearly reproduced with some mechanical means. I haven’t seen the show yet to figure it out, but nothing could be more Johnsian. [Or haven’t I? I remembered the related prints, but forgot that these little drawings were included in his 2021 show.]

On one level they’re pure exercises in composition. They’re literally just lines. But I can’t not also think of them as little scenes; the grouping practically demands a narrative of some kind. Can you imagine Johns just making up little situations and stories for his little guys? It’s been decades now. Do they have names? Do they have lore?

Even as the autobiographical elements of Johns’s project move in and out of focus over the years, it still feels a little weird or retrograde to wonder such things. But it also feels OK to assume that motifs and figures and strategies recur for a reason; Johns is not some automaton, throwing the same five ingredients into the pot every day.

Until I hear different, then, I’m going to assume they’re these little guys, happily working and living inside Johns’s capital I:

Previously, related [and I love that they used a knee drawing on the cover of the exhibition catalogue, btw]: Taking A Knee; also Blackened Angel; also Little Johns