![]() ![]() It was in Sharon that one friend, the art dealer Francis Naumann, first met Johns’s longtime studio assistant James Meyer. He only occasionally allows visitors the few assistants he’s employed are meant to recede into the background, there but not there. ![]() There is no Jeff Koons–like army of implementers doing his bidding and no Andy Warhol–like Factory of hangers-on in the corners, watching it all happen. Johns’s primary studio - a large, fully renovated old barn on the grounds of his 130-acre estate in Sharon, Connecticut - is a reflection of his personality. The work comes first, and they work alone. Another friend compares him to fellow introverts like Philip Roth and Philip Glass: superficially polite yet diffident-and, at moments, abrupt and even biting. Those who still see him say Johns, now 84, can be a brilliant, charming presence, but also by turns slightly cool and prickly - the counterweight, in temperament, of his vivacious late friend and partner Robert Rauschenberg. “He’s spent his whole life cultivating a certain air of mystery,” says David Ross, a friend of the artist and the former director of the Whitney. Martin with a circle of friends who are protective of him and guarded on his behalf. In his half-century as one of the universally sanctified titans of modern art, Jasper Johns has led a private life, if not a reclusive one, shuttling between his homes in Connecticut and St. Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY ![]() #Jasper johns series#For example, the lithographic stones and plates that Johns used to print Color Numerals had been reworked from those used to produce Black Numerals, a series made the previous year at Gemini.An untitled Jasper Johns drawing that is part of a civil suit against Johns’s former assistant James Meyer. Johns has taken advantage of the opportunity offered by printmaking to test multiple options, and pursue different avenues of exploration in his repetitive, measured transformation of the numerical subject. His exploration of numeric figures began in 1955 and grew in intensity until about 1970 it is the motif to which he has returned most often, exploring it in paintings, drawings, sculpture, and prints. #Jasper johns serial#Do something else to it”- reveal the overarching serial logic of his creative approach. Johns’s basic instructions to himself, penned in a sketchbook-“Take an object. Johns’s series draws renewed attention to the fact that counting, something the mind already knows but overlooks, involves eye, mind, and body. The subject of Johns’s series, therefore, is the 10 base digits of the decimal system, derived centuries ago from humans’ 10 fingers. While Johns’s numerical sequence could in theory extend indefinitely, Color Numerals demarcates a terminal arithmetic progression, its finality reinforced by the heavy white outline of Figure 9. This succession is color-coded by Johns’s signatures, which match the topmost hue in each print. Seen in sequence, each print functions as a point on a continuum, with color transitioning from primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) in Figure 0 to secondary colors (orange, green, and purple) in Figure 9. The meaning of any series is to be found not just in its individual parts, but also in the spaces between them. This is wittily underscored by the Mona Lisa (printed in reverse) in Figure 7, a pun on the multiple definitions of “figure.” Counteracting over-familiarity, each of the Color Numerals prints elevates a number, its form derived from a commercial stencil, to a striking, rainbow-hued portrait. Johns favors subjects that “the mind already knows” but overlooks due to constant exposure. Since the mid-1950s, Jasper Johns (American, born 1930) has reworked key motifs-flags, targets, maps, the alphabet, and numbers-in a serial fashion, exploring the impact of changes in color, scale, sequence, and medium. ![]()
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