Jasper Johns emerged as a leading voice in American art in the late-1950s with paintings of iconic motifs such as flags, targets, and numbers. He has since developed a body of work of extraordinary narrative complexity and technical virtuosity. This exhibition premieres his most recent series of paintings, drawings, and prints, created over the last year and a half.

In June 2012, Johns encountered a photograph of the painter Lucian Freud reproduced in a Christie’s auction catalogue. Inspired not only by the photographic image, but also by the physical qualities of the object itself, Johns took this motif through a succession of cross-medium permutations. He also incorporated into his art for the first time the text of a rubber stamp he had made several years ago, 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, invoking an enigmatic sense of melancholy.

Employing an intricate combination of techniques, Johns worked intermittently across an array of mediums. Problems and solutions from one work inform the development of ensuing works, contributing to both the physical and conceptual richness of the series. This exhibition lays bare 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’s career over the last 60 years.

*image (left)
Jasper Johns.
Untitled. 2013.
Ink on plastic. 27 1/2 × 36" (69.9 × 91.4 cm).
© Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.
Photograph: Jerry Thompson