Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays
"I think that most art which begins to make a statement fails to make a statement because the methods used are too schematic or artificial. I think that one wants from a painting a sense of life. The final suggestion, the final statement, has to be not a deliberate statement, but a helpless statement. It has to be what you cannot avoid saying, not what you set out to say." Jasper Johns, as quoted in A Thing Among Things: The Art of Jasper Johns, by John Yau, published by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers.
"In the early fifties I was going to be an artist, and I kept meeting people who were artists, and I thought, ‘Here I am, still going to be an artist.’ What was different? What needed to be changed, so that I would be, rather than going to be? It was then that I decided I would only allow myself to do what I couldn’t not do, and whatever I did would have to represent myself as an artist. There was a change in my spirit, in my thought and my work, as well as some doubt and terror."
'Jasper Johns: Something Resembling Truth' opens February 10 at the Broad museum in Los Angeles, and we are delighted to recommend the exquisitely produced, 262-page, linen-bound exhibition catalog, complete with tipped-on front and back cover panels. read the full post
Published by Matthew Marks Gallery. Text by Hilton Als.
Jasper Johns (born 1930) has spent 70 years developing a distinctive lexicon of symbols and images gathered from art history, popular culture and personal experience. With a newly commissioned text by Hilton Als, Drawings 1982–2021 presents 25 works in a variety of media over the last 40 years that demonstrate the mastery of technique and material, and the continuous preoccupation with questions of his own past, that are foundational to the evolution of Johns’ rich and enigmatic oeuvre. Revisiting some of his most iconic motifs—the American flag and crosshatch, flagstone and harlequin patterns—he moves back and forth through other familiar imagery and references to artists such as de Kooning, da Vinci, Picasso and Rodin, reconfiguring and recombining them while steadily incorporating new subjects, including a grieving soldier, skeletons and the cosmos.
Published by Matthew Marks Gallery. Text by Alexi Worth.
When Jasper Johns (born 1930) had his first one-person exhibition—in 1958, at the age of 27—its impact was widespread and immediate. Since then, as his influence has grown, his work has evolved, circling back to familiar subjects while opening up new formal and thematic frontiers. In his recent drawings, prints and paintings, Johns traces the shifting meaning of old and new motifs while contending with his own rich artistic past, revisiting his Seasons paintings of the mid-1980s and his extensive collection of visual materials.
Recent Paintings and Works on Paper accompanies the artist’s first exhibition of new work in five years and presents paintings, prints and drawings that show the artist at his self-reflexive best. Extensively illustrated with over 70 full-color plates, the book chronicles a new creative chapter in the life of an artist with few peers.
PUBLISHER Matthew Marks Gallery
BOOK FORMAT Clth, 9 x 11 in. / 96 pgs / 75 color / 1 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 8/20/2019 Out of stock indefinitely
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2019 p. 139
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781944929176TRADE List Price: $50.00 CAD $69.95 GBP £45.00
Published by Royal Academy of Arts. Text by Roberta Bernstein, Edith Devaney, Hiroko Ikegami, Morgan Meis, Robert Storr.
Jasper Johns is regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, and has remained central to American art since his arrival in New York in the 1950s. With his then partner Robert Rauschenberg, Johns helped to establish a decisive new direction in the art world, termed "Neo-Dada" at the time. Johns' striking use of popular iconography, "things the mind already knows," as he put it (flags, numbers, maps), made the familiar unfamiliar—and made a colossal impact in the art world, becoming a touchstone for Pop, minimalist and conceptual art. This handsomely illustrated book, now available in paperback, brings together Johns' paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings. From his innovations in sculpture to his use of collage in paintings, it gives focus to different chapters of Johns' career and examines the international significance of his work. Featuring contributions from a range of experts, this volume explores the depth and breadth of Johns' oeuvre, encompassing more than half a century. Jasper Johns (born 1930) made his major breakthrough as a painter in the mid-1950s when he started using iconic, popular images in his paintings—an explosive move at a moment when advanced painting was understood to be exclusively abstract. Johns' midcentury paintings' lush, painterly surfaces resemble those of abstract expressionism, but Johns arrived at them through slow, labor-intensive processes and mediums such as encaustic. Throughout his 60-year career Johns has worked with many different mediums and techniques, using the restlessness of his own process to explore the interplay of materials, meaning and representation in art.
Published by Royal Academy of Arts. Text by Roberta Bernstein, Edith Devaney, Hiroko Ikegami, Morgan Meis, Robert Storr.
Jasper Johns is regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, and has remained central to American art since his arrival in New York in the 1950s. With his then partner Robert Rauschenberg, Johns helped to establish a decisive new direction in the art world, termed “Neo-Dada” at the time. Johns’ striking use of popular iconography, “things the mind already knows,” as he put it (flags, numbers, maps), made the familiar unfamiliar—and made a colossal impact in the art world, becoming a touchstone for Pop, minimalist and conceptual art.
This handsomely illustrated book brings together Johns’ paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings. From his innovations in sculpture to his use of collage in paintings, it gives focus to different chapters of Johns’ career and examines the international significance of his work. Featuring contributions from a range of experts, this volume promises to explore the depth and breadth of Johns’ oeuvre, made over more than half a century.
Jasper Johns (born 1930) made his major breakthrough as a painter in the mid-1950s when he started using iconic, popular images in his paintings—an explosive move at a moment when advanced painting was understood to be exclusively abstract. Johns’ midcentury paintings’ lush, painterly surfaces resemble those of Abstract Expressionism, but Johns arrived at them through slow, labor-intensive processes and mediums such as encaustic. Throughout his 60-year career Johns has worked with many different mediums and techniques, using the restlessness of his own process to explore the interplay of materials, meaning and representation in art.
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Text by Ann Temkin, Christophe Cherix.
In June 2012, Jasper Johns encountered a photograph of the painter Lucian Freud reproduced in a Christie's auction catalogue. Inspired not only by the image, but by the physical qualities of the photograph itself, Johns took this motif through a succession of cross-medium permutations. He also incorporated into his art the text of a rubber stamp he had had made several years earlier to allow him to efficiently decline the myriad requests and invitations that come his way: "Regrets/Jasper Johns." But the stamp's text also calls to mind the more familiar connotations of regret, such as loss, disappointment and remorse, evoking an enigmatic sense of melancholy. Published in conjunction with an exhibition of this series of paintings, drawings and prints created over the last year and a half through an intricate combination of techniques, this publication presents each of the new works in full color. An essay by Ann Temkin, Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, and Christophe Cherix, Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints, The Museum of Modern Art, examines the importance of process and experimentation, the cycle of dead ends and fresh starts, and the incessant interplay of materials, meaning, and representation so characteristic of Johns' career over the last 60 years.
Ann Temkin is an American art curator, and currently the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Christophe Cherix was appointed The Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art in 2013. His appointment followed a reorganization that merged the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, of which Mr. Cherix had been Chief Curator since 2010, with the Department of Drawings. He joined the Museum’s curatorial staff in July 2007, after serving as curator of the Cabinet des Estampes at the Musée d'art et d'histoire in Geneva. His specialty is modern and contemporary art, with a particular focus on the art of the 1960s and 1970s.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Jennifer Quick, Jennifer L. Roberts.
Centering on “The Dutch Wives” (1975), a double-panel encaustic-and-newsprint painting in the artist’s signature “crosshatch” motif, this catalogue explores the impact of print on the work of Jasper Johns (born 1930). The two panels of “The Dutch Wives” are imperfect duplicates of each other--a reminder that the process of the mechanical reproduction of words and images is never quite perfect. The book examines the concepts of “print” and “the press” in terms not only of printmaking and Johns’ celebrated experiments in that medium, but also in informational terms, tracing his frequent use of newsprint and its material, temporal, political, and formal implications. The publication also features prints and drawings by Johns that help demonstrate the aspects of printmaking that inform his entire oeuvre: repetition, reversal, indexicality, layering, sequencing and topology.
Published by Matthew Marks Gallery. Interview by Terry Winters.
This monograph reproduces sculptures and works on paper completed over the last five years by Jasper Johns (born 1930), who in February 2011 became the first visual artist to receive a Presidential Medal of Honor since 1977. The sculptures, cast in bronze, aluminum and silver from wax originals, feature Johns’ signature number grid and the impressions of various objects and textures, such as choreographer Merce Cunningham’s foot. The recent works on paper include a series of drawings and prints based on three small works Johns made early in 2010 on Shrinky Dinks (a plastic made for children to draw on, which shrinks when heated). Color plates are accompanied by a conversation between Johns and fellow artist Terry Winters, which takes Johns’ newest works as the starting point for a broader discussion of his artistic practice.
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Text by Carolyn Lanchner.
Jasper Johns made a tremendous impact on Modern art in the twentieth century. As a pioneer of Pop art, he was a key figure in the postwar tradition that brought American art to the forefront of the international scene. This new volume in the MoMA Artist Series, which explores important artists and favorite works in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, guides readers through a dozen of the artist's most memorable achievements. A short and lively essay by Carolyn Lanchner, a former curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum, accompanies each work, illuminating its significance and placing it in its historical moment in the development of Modern art and the artist's own life. This volume provides a unique overview of someone who shaped the development of American art since mid-century and is an excellent resource for readers interested in the stories behind the masterpieces of the Modern canon.
Published by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers. By John Yau.
This beautifully illustrated and profoundly original volume of essays by the New York poet and critic John Yau mounts one of the most eloquent defenses of the art and vision of Jasper Johns ever written--going well past tired and traditional Formalist readings of the artist's work to propose a completely new way of reading them: One that is intensely human. Praised by renowned American art historian and critic Jack Flam as, "a brilliantly attentive and original reading of Jasper Johns' work," this volume not only makes many aspects of the artist's work accessible for the first time, but also reveals an emotional tenor to the man whom so many critics have characterized, wrongly, according to Yau, as aloof or hermetic. Expanding upon the ideas he laid out in The United States of Jasper Johns, published in 1996 by Zoland Books, Yau traces the ways that the artist's work conveys a connection to the common experience--a "sense of life" that encompasses thoughts, memory, consumption, excretion, life, death, time and mortality. Yau's readings of the works are broadened by statements from conversations between the poet and artist that have taken place over the course of the last 30 years. Lending to this sense of intimacy, many of the works collected in this volume come directly from the artist's studio or his private collection, and have rarely been reproduced before. According to Flam, "John Yau focuses his attention on how the artist's pioneering paintings relate to life as it is lived--and on what they tell us about what it means to be mortal and alive in time. Along the way, Yau cuts a much-needed clearing through the tangle of narrowly self-reflexive interpretations that have plagued so much critical writing on Johns' work during the past half century--providing a fresh approach and opening our eyes to Johns' accomplishment in revealing ways. This is a groundbreaking book, written with both precision and passion. It should be read by everyone who cares about modern painting." John Yau is a poet and critic. He is the author of several books, including The Passionate Spectator: Essays on Art and Poetry, Paradiso Diaspora and Borrowed Love Poems, as well as contributions to monographs and catalogues on Joan Mitchell, Jessica Stockholder, Wifredo Lam and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Since 2004, he has been the Arts Editor of the Brooklyn Rail. He has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, Yale University and the Maryland Institute College of Art, and is currently an Associate Professor of Critical Studies at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry in 2006-2007.
Published by Matthew Marks Gallery. Text by Thomas Crow.
In this stunning collection of works on paper made between 1997 and 2007, most of which have never been reproduced before, Jasper Johns "preempts the tendency of commentators to cite his productions of decades past by doing the job himself," according to essayist Thomas Crow. The works are filled with autobiographical references and allusions to art-historical precursors. They often combine early motifs like flags, maps, numerals or cross-hatchings with newer ones like the Harlequin's costume, pieces of string or flagstones. Says Crow, "This recursivity is habitual. There is virtually no motif or device that Johns has ever used that can be regarded as safely forgotten or discarded. When asked about the longevity of certain of these motifs, Johns replies half-seriously that he would like to get rid of them, but they will not go away. In his gradually expanding network of emblems and objects, any one of them, it seems, can strike up a relationship with any other, such that the outcome almost never prompts thoughts of exhaustion or absence of invention. A single addition, like the bits of string suspended in catenary curves that made their appearance around 1996, has a way of regalvanizing the entire existing repertory."
Published by Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. Text by Hugh M. Davies, Stephanie Hanor, Mark Lancaster.
The underlying subject matter of Jasper Johns' work is not the object represented, but the investigation of how we perceive, label and categorize objects. Published to accompany a traveling exhibition of the same name with stops in Princeton, San Diego and Seattle, Jasper Johns: Light Bulb examines the significance of this common object as an image the artist explored for more than 20 years. The light bulb is the subject of Johns' first sculpture, "Light Bulb I," created in 1958, the year of Johns' first exhibition in New York at the fledgling Leo Castelli Gallery, and has appeared in various media throughout his long career. Bringing together for the first time all of Johns' light bulb sculptures and related drawings and prints--including several drawings and modified prints from the artist's own collection--this volume offers an unparalleled opportunity to examine Johns' practice through a single image and reveals significant relationships between his two- and three-dimensional work. It includes an essay by Dr. Stephanie Hanor, Senior Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and a personal narrative on the creation of one of Johns' light bulb sculptures by the artist and former Johns studio assistant Mark Lancaster.
PUBLISHER
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 9.5 x 7.5 in. / 96 pgs / 37 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 11/1/2008 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2009 p. 185
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780934418690TRADE List Price: $45.00 CAD $60.00 GBP £40.00
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Essay by Kirk Varnedoe. Texts by Roberta Bernstein and Lilian Tone.
Jasper Johns's art unites mastery, mystery, simplicity, and contradiction. His methodical working process combines intense deliberation and experimentation, obsessive craft, cycles of revision and repetition, and decisive shifts of direction. Johns also frequently borrows images from other artists, which, ironically, only underscores the originality of his own vision. His work occupies a key position in the art of the second half of the twentieth century. Jasper Johns: A Retrospective is the most complete and authoritative resource on it available, containing 264 color plates illustrating his paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints. Accompanying essays review his essential themes, analyze his references to other artists, and explore how his contemporaries have, in turn, seen and absorbed his own work. The plates are arranged to follow the stages of his career, allowing comparison of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints from each period, as his style developed and changed. That comprehensive selection of reproductions is interwoven with an illustrated chronology tracing Johns' life and work with unprecedented accuracy and thoroughness. With its scholarly essays and extensive bibliography, Jasper Johns: A Retrospective is the indispensable reference work on this crucial artist. This volume was originally published to accompany the major exhibition of Johns' work held at The Museum of Modern Art in 1996 and 1997, his first full retrospective in 20 years. It has been out of print since 2002.
Published by The Cleveland Museum of Art. Essays by Roberta Bernstein and Carter E. Foster. Foreword by Katharine Lee Reid.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. And then some. Between 1954 and 1960, Jasper Johns developed his well-known repertory of flat images, including flags, targets, alphabets, words, maps, and numbers--subjects drawn not from popular culture so much as from human consciousness. His explorations of these familiar symbols drew attention to how reality is represented through such visual signs, and how we interpret them. This exhibition catalogue accompanies the first show to concentrate in depth on a single subject by Johns--Numbers--and it brings together painting, drawing, collage, and printmaking from all periods of his career, focusing on the years between 1955 and 1979. Included are an in-depth essay by curator Roberta Bernstein, who has written extensively on Johns, color plates of all the works in the exhibition, illustrations of other important works, and a list of all works by Johns on the subject, organized by theme.
PUBLISHER The Cleveland Museum of Art
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 11.5 x 10 in. / 96 pgs / 134 color
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 2/2/2004 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2004
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780940717756TRADE List Price: $40.00 CAD $50.00
Published by Walker Art Center. Edited by Joan Rothfuss. Essays by Richard Shiff, Victor Stoichita, Foreword by Kathy Halbreich.
In 1984, Jasper Johns suggested to an interviewer that he had made a critical shift in his working process. “In my early work,” he said, “I tried to hide my personality, my psychological state, my emotions...I sort of stuck to my guns for a while, but eventually it seemed like a losing battle. Finally, one must simply drop the reserve.” His paintings of the 1980s and 90s bear this out: their imagery often includes objects and locations in his present studio and home, as well as allusions to memories of his childhood. These motifs are reiterated, altered, reworked and quoted in the context of new compositions, forming layered and complex spaces of recollection that merge past and present. This profusely illustrated volume, published in conjunction with an exhibition of paintings, prints and drawings organized by the Walker Art Center, is the first to look broadly at this period in Johns' career. All of the artist's major bodies of work from the past two decades--including those based on the Seasons, Green Angel and Catenary motifs--are covered in this study, with special consideration given to imagery appropriated from Picasso and Manet. Many of the works are published here for the first time, making this an invaluable tool for the study of Johns' work.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Essay by Richard Rosenblum. Foreword by Markus Brüderlin.
At the pinnacle of Abstract Expressionism, then 24-year-old Jasper Johns covered an entire canvas with a painted version of the American flag, and altered postwar American art forever. In just one work, a work which hung on the wall both like any other flag and like any other abstract painting, Johns had summed up the positions of Abstract Expressionism and European Concrete Art, and had pointed the way for both geometric hard-edge painting and American Pop Art. Nevertheless, Johns cannot be reduced to this one, iconic artwork. With a view toward revealing the complexity and grace of his oeuvre, this book presents oil and object paintings, and drawings from the estate of the artist, and allows a focused view onto the pictorial workshop and world of ideas of Jasper Johns.
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Artwork by Jasper Johns. Contributions by Kirk Varnedoe. Text by Roberta Bernstein, Glenn Lowry.
New in Paperback The work of Jasper Johns occupies a key position in the art of the second half of the 20th century. Jasper Johns: A Retrospective is the most complete and authoritative book on the artist to date, containing 264 color plates illustrating his work in all its facets--paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints. Accompanying essays review Johns' essential themes; analyze his many methods of referring to predecessor artists; and explore how his art has been viewed by other artists. The plates are arranged in sections according to the stages of Johns' career, allowing comparison of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints from each period of his art as it developed and changed. This comprehensive selection of reproductions is interwoven with an illustrated chronology tracing Johns' life and work with unprecedented accuracy and thoroughness. With its scholarly essays, chronology, and extensive bibliography, Jasper Johns: A Retrospective is the indispensable reference work on this crucially important artist. This volume was originally published to accompany the major exhibition of Johns' work held at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1996-97.
Published by Charta. Artwork by Jasper Johns. Contributions by Barbara Bertozzi.
This little treasure documents Jasper Johns' Seasons cycle of four canvases that were originally shown at the Leo Castelli Gallery in 1986, and which have since become a milestone work in his career. An anthology of key Johns motifs, and thus something of a taking-stock sequence, Seasons is yet another masterwork in Johns' career.
PUBLISHER Charta
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 8.25 x 10.5 in. / 64 pgs / 20 color / 20 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 11/2/1996 No longer our product
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 1996
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9788881580798TRADE List Price: $25.00 CAD $30.00
Jasper Johns: Recent Paintings and Works on Paper
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns: Regrets
Jasper Johns: In Press
Jasper Johns: New Sculpture and Works on Paper
Jasper Johns
A Thing Among Things: The Art of Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns: Drawings 1997-2007
Jasper Johns: Light Bulb
Jasper Johns: A Retrospective
Jasper Johns: Numbers
Past Things And Present: Jasper Johns Since 1983
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns' Seasons