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WOW! – Work of the Week – Julian Opie – Walking Statuettes

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Julian Opie
Walking Statuettes
2017
Series of seven hand-painted statuettes
Various sizes
Edition of 30
Signed and numbered
“I don’t invent or imagine things, just notice and record them.”
Julian Opie is a master in the reductive style. He expertly captures the essence and individuality of each of his subjects with minimal line-work and flat, solid colors. His highly stylized works can be characterized as a blend of Pop Art, Minimalism with contemporary sensibility that capture the world around us precisely.
Employing a variety of media and technologies, Opie distills everyday experiences into concise but evocative renditions, and his clean, thickly outlined figures have made an iconic impression on the contemporary art world.
Opie’s figures are typically drawn from photographs of people walking in the streets. He has admittedly gone through hundreds of pictures of passers-by and picks a select few to draw, which he saves as a palette of characters to use for his creations. According to the artist, each personage gives him surprises and opportunities to create individuality, that he could not invent, such as clothing or hairstyles. He then arranges them back into a crowd, and, like any crowd on the street, the composition is made up of strangers who walk distractedly, never interacting with one another. By making groups of walkers, Opie
composes a street crowd.
This week’s Work of the Week! WOW! is Walking Statuettes.
These 7 Walking Statuettes displayed together form exactly that, a group of walkers forming a “street or sidewalk crowd”
Opie’s inspiration for his statuettes stemmed from his grandfather’s walnut and leather desk, upon which, as a child, items sat at his eye-level – Bakelite lamps and stone pen holders, leather-bound books and glass bottles of ink. These items turned the desk into their own surface. In turn, the Walking Statuettes by Opie, turn their surface into a pavement, such as a busy road populated with people checking their phones and shifting their balance and bags. His creations are models, stand-ins, that can be placed and played with.
Julian Opie observes people closely, and like a caricaturist, he has a formidable eye for foibles idiosyncrasies and character. The paradox is that he renders these nuances in a flattened, abstract style that seems at first glance to be uniform and cold, yet, each statuette seems individual and real.
The entire series of resin statuettes are hand-painted front and back. Each statuette stands approximately 14 -16 inches in height, and 5 – 8 inches wide individually. Each figurine features the artist’s signature and edition number on the bottom of each figurine. Arrange them anyway you like to create your own street scene.
Drawing influence from classical portraiture, as well as public life in today’s modern society, the artist connects the clean visual language of modern life, with the fundamentals of art history. His themes have been described as “engagement with art history, use of new technology, obsession with the human body.”

WOW! – Work of the Week – James Rosenquist – Sky Hole, from Welcome to the Water Planet

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James Rosenquist
Sky Hole, from Welcome to the Water Planet
1989
Pressed Paper Pulp in colors wth lithographic collage on Rives BFK and TGL handmade paper
106 x 65 in.
Edition of 56
Pencil signed, dated, titled and numbered
About the work:
“I’m the one who gave steroids to Pop art”
James Rosenquist
James Rosenquist’s larger than life brand of Pop is not the literal Pop Art of Warhol, Lichtenstein or Indiana. Rosenquist’s work, seemingly irrational owed a debt to Surrealism through large-scale, mysterious pictorial combinations. As his works evolved, he continued to employ a juxtaposition of elements and materials, creating complex compositions as a means of exploring design and narrative. His work from the 1980s through to the end of his career is still on steroids – vibrantly colorful, abstract compositions that explore perceptions of time and space, in addition to our environment.
In the mid-1970s, Rosenquist moved his studio from Manhattan to Aripeka, Florida where his aesthetic was affected by the flora and fauna of his new surroundings. His interests shifted from the culture of consumerism to an exploration of humankind’s place in the environment. The lusher paintings of the ’80s suit their time with their candied colors. Rosenquist, in short, is one of the few former pop artists whose work continues unabatedly to have something to say. However, unlike most political art, Rosenquist’s work seems non-polemical at first, and that is the source of its power.
This week’s Work of the Week! WOW! is from the series Welcome to the Water Planet – Sky Hole.
The series came to be after Ken Tyler of Tyler Graphics Ltd (TGL) invited Rosenquist to work at his new purpose-built workshop at Mount Kisco in upstate New York. Rosenquist, who started his career as a billboard artist, was always drawn to larger than life size compositions, accepted the offer when Tyler promised him that he would provide handmade paper as big as the artist could imagine. For the project, Tyler devised a huge deckle box to make hand-made papers about 60 by 120 inches, including a giant printing press for lithography and etching measuring 120 by 240 inches.
Tyler had a deep seeded interest in hand-made papers and started experimenting with Pulp Paper projects in the 70’s, working on projects with Rauschenberg, Kelly and Hockney, among others, and by the time work started with Rosenquist, he had brought paper works to new heights in terms of scale, color and texture.
This blended perfectly with James Rosenquist’s desire to develop his idea of an image of slow-heating popcorn tied together with his concerns about the state of planet Earth – the only water planet known in existence in the universe at the time. Rosenquist included imagery that evoked the colorful and sensual riches of the earth and brilliant flora from Florida, set within a wondrous star-lit universe. ‘We all live on the water planet’, the artist stated in an interview. Rosenquist’s series of paper works were intended to act both as a celebration and a warning to what might happen to our planet.
The first idea that came to form for Sky Hole was birds of paradise approaching the water planet. The image was deconstructed into its component parts, made with curved lines of cross-hatching that would then be printed in color lithography. These lithographic elements form a collage that is laid on the brilliantly colored paper pulp sheet. The separate colors were made by filling different moulds with paper pulp placed on top of the large sheets of handmade paper. The method, was one of trial and error.
At the initial stages of the project, the method of using metal moulds, or ‘cookie cutters’, resulted in problems with translating Rosenquist’s designs into paper form due to inconsistencies of the pulp paper. But, always seeking to experiment and innovate, Tyler was able to perfect the system while Rosenquist developed the templates for each piece. For the large areas of graded color, impossible to achieve using mould shapes, Tyler proposed the use of a spray gun, used for applying stucco to walls in houses, which could spray the gradations of color across the pulp on which the lithographic elements were collaged. The technique was successful and resulted in a look of apparent spontaneity and effortlessness, contrary to the hours of preparation and a technique born of experimentation.
The collaboration between the artist and master printmaker created revolutionary works, Rosenquist, himself noting that ‘The wonderful thing about paper pulp is the color. If you take a magnifying glass, you’ll see a little fuzz rising like smoke off the surface of this handmade paper – like doing giant watercolors and letting this watercolor seep together at the perfect moment …’

WOW! – Work of the Week – Roberto Matta – Hours of the Day

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8am

8pm

10pm

Roberto Matta
Hours of the Day Series
1975
Etching with aquatints
25 x 36 in.
Edition of 125
Pencil signed and numbered
About the work:
“I am interested only in the unknown and I work for my own astonishment.”
Roberto Matta
Chilean-born artist Roberto Matta was an international figure whose worldview represented a synthesis of European, American, and Latin American cultures of the 20th century. He was a classically trained architect and moved to Paris in the early 30s to apprentice with famed modernist Le Corbusier. During his two-year tutorship, he met and developed friendships with many of the leading international writers and artists who had made Paris the intellectual capital after World War I.
By 1937, he had moved away from architecture to focus solely on visual arts and became an important member of the Surrealist group. The movement was focally concerned with releasing the potential of the unconscious mind and was acutely disdained with the rational world. While he certainly shared stylistic and intellectual similarities with the Surrealist group, Matta was never able to completely reconcile his strong social conscience with the movement’s inward-looking practices. Instead, Matta balanced his interest in the human psyche with an active engagement with the external world. In the process, he provided early and crucial inspiration for the Abstract Expressionists during the War years, when he lived and worked in New York. Matta eventually broke with both groups to pursue a highly personal artistic vision.
This week’s Work of the Week! WOW! is Matta’s ‘Hours of the Day’ series.
Each work in the series is rich with Matta’s classic visual lexicon of blended abstraction, figuration, and multi-dimensional space, forming complex and cosmic landscapes inhabited by anthropomorphic figures. This particular style of Matta’s has been called inscape. Inscape works represent and evoke the human psyche in visual form, as filtered through the writings of Freud and the psychoanalytic view that the mind is three-dimensional.
Each landscape in the series is representative of each hour of the day. This is masterfully accomplished through the different lighting, meant to capture time passing. The etchings are works of expert control, exuberant with color and inventiveness. Although more joyful than many of his earlier works, they continue the artist’s exploration of duality.
Matta’s artistic oeuvre overflows with persistent oppositions: structured architecture and vast cosmos, figuration and abstraction, scientific inquiry and invisible imaginings, social consciousness and interior reflection—all of these complex, sometimes contrary, impulses stem from his international education spanning three continents and a career rich with encounters and friendships.
Matta’s artistic legacy was also a deeply personal one, as four of his six children became notable artists as well. Most celebrated among his progeny was the contemporary artist Gordon Matta-Clark, who followed in his fathers footsteps by creating socially conscious work with a distinctively architectural bent.

WOW! – Work of the Week – John Baldessari – Money with Space Between

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John Baldessari
Money with Space Between
1994
Lithograph and screenprint on 2 panels
48 x 22 in. each
Edition of 45
Pencil signed and numbered
About the work:
John Baldessari is often endearingly referred to as “the guy that puts dots over people’s faces.” He is considered the godfather of conceptualism, having made a career out of defying expectations. Over 50 years, his inquisitive approach to making art has expanded the parameters of what we consider to be “art.” His work certainly succeeds in making people stop, look and reflect rather than simply taking it in passively. His sharp insights into the nature of perception and relationships between images are engaging, highlighted by his trademark deadpan humor.
Baldessari pledged, in a 1970 groundbreaking work “I will not make anymore boring art.” This pledge was addressed to both his viewers but also to himself. He has remained true to his word, never shying away from new media, allowing his works to always retain a freshness and relevance that many younger artists struggle to match. Through his experimentations, he became responsible for the way many artists use appropriation in their work today. Kruger, Sherman and Salle are among the many that cite him as an influence. He is a giant of contemporary art.
This week’s Work of the Week! WOW! is named Money with Space Between.
Baldessari has spent his entire life living and working in California. It is therefore not surprising that much of his works incorporate Hollywood film stills and other cinematic imagery. The artist never addresses the source of his images, considering the copy itself the true source. Money with Space Between has all the visual and narrative qualities of a film still – an action is taking place between two men dressed in suits, their faces obscured by Baldessari’s famous dots.
Baldessari came upon colored stickers on produce at grocery stores and found the simple method of demarkation and concealment fascinating. The dots hide from view areas of interest and force the viewer to refocus their attention on other elements. In placing dots over the faces of the two men in Money with Space Between, the action that taking place – an exchange of money – becomes the focal point. Through eliminating all additional information, such as the expressions on the protagonist’s faces, Baldessari gives the viewer the freedom to interpret the situation and make their own assumptions.
Despite that the dots can be challenging or startling to the viewer, this is not a work that requires deep reflection. It is simple and straightforward. The title says it all: money with space between. What is complex about this work is the presentation. There are specific instructions on how to frame the piece, provided by artist. Both panels are framed separately. The top and bottom margins are 2 1/2 inches wide, the left margin on panel A (the left panel), is 1 1/2 inches wide, and the right margin 1/2 an inch wide. Conversely, panel B is a mirror opposite, the left margin being 1/2 inches and the right margin 1 1/2 inches. The frame itself is specified to be a black matte finish, with the face measuring 3/4 in, and 2 inches deep. The space between the two sheets (not the frames) is to measure 4 1/2 inches. When looking at the work as a whole, the specifications of the framework create an illusion of it being one whole piece, as opposed to two separate panels.
In a 2013 interview with David Salle, Baldessari said: “I go back and forth between wanting to be abundantly simple and maddeningly complex. I always compare what I do to the work of a mystery writer—like, you don’t want to know the end of the book right away. What a good writer does is give you false clues. You go here, no, that’s not right; you go here, no, that’s not right, and then … I much prefer that kind of game. But then you get tired of yourself and you just want to be forthright.” In Money with Space Between Baldessari manages to capture both simplicity and complexity in a manner that is truly unique to him.

WOW! – Work of the Week – Roy Lichtenstein – Forms in Space

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Roy Lichtenstein
Forms in Space
1985
Screenprint on Rives BFK paper
52 x 35 3/4 in.
Edition of 125
Pencil signed and numbered
About the work:
 “I’m interested in portraying a sort of antisensibility that pervades society,”
Roy Lichtenstein was a pop artist whose works, in a style derived from comic strips, portray the trivialization of culture endemic in contemporary American life. Using bright, strident colors and techniques borrowed from the printing industry, he ironically incorporates mass-produced emotions and objects into highly sophisticated references to art history
Although, in the early 1960s, Lichtenstein was often casually accused of merely copying his pictures from cartoons, his method involved some considerable alteration of the source images. The extent of those changes, and the artist’s rationale for introducing them, has long been central to discussions of his work, as it would seem to indicate whether he was interested above all in producing pleasing, artistic compositions, or in shocking his viewers with the garish impact of popular culture.
This week’s Work of the Week! WOW! is an image of one of the most iconic symbols of the world. The American flag, to this day, carries a host of connotations and meanings that shift from individual to individual, making it the ideal subject for artists to interpret.
Jasper Johns was the first American artist to present viewers with the dichotomies embedded in the American flag, and over the years, others have followed suit, notably Roy Lichtenstein.
“Forms in Space” by Lichtenstein’s example of the American flag, that leaves open it’s interpretation to the viewer. Although it is bears an obvious resemblance to the American flag, the artist has toyed subtly with its formal makeup, slanting and upping the number of stripes and inverting the colors used in the upper left corner, replacing the flag’s iconic white stars with rows of simple blue ben-day dots placed against a white background. Despite these slight alterations, the blocks of uniform color and flat surface planes make the composition an easy one to take in at first glance, but the image could easily be part of a larger narrative.
It is clear that a statement is being made. While still expertly balanced in form and color, the elimination of certain details and addition of others are important in unifying Lichtenstein’s interpretation of the flag, providing it with formal structure. There remains, however, an element of agitation. The lines of the flag, usually horizontal are set at an angle; implying movement. When observing the work, an optical illusion occurs, and the flag seems to be stretching outward, expanding, inviting each of us to be more socially and politically aware.
Always experimenting with the boundaries of high and low art, this work exemplifies but also interrupts the fast paced consumption of the mass media imagery. The viewer is asked to to look closer and consider what is being represented. The statement that life reflects art and art reflects life rings true when considering Lichtenstein’s use of the most powerful American symbol. His inspiration is drawn from the real, everyday world.

WOW! – Work of the Week – Sol LeWitt – Distorted Cubes #2

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Sol LeWitt
Distorted Cubes #2
2001
Linocut on Somerset Velvet paper
43 3/4 x 42 1/4 in.
Edition of 50
Pencil signed and numbered
About the work:
Beginning in the 1960s and early 1970s, Sol LeWitt designed elaborate units of cubes, exploring all possible combinations and permutations of the three-dimensional shape. He once noted, “The most interesting characteristic of the cube is that it is relatively uninteresting. It is best used as a basic unit for any more elaborate function.”
Sol LeWitt is credited with leading the Minimalist movement as a response to the intuitive works of the abstract expressionists, and as a progression of postmodernism. His calculated, studied works brought to the forefront medium and form. With this simple artistic vocabulary of lines and cubes, LeWitt made use of a grid system to create an art free of iconographic associations. It was the ideas that underline and inform that held the content of his work. LeWitt created a new art-form free of narrative and descriptive elements.
Printmaking was an ideal tool for him to experiment his conceptual strategies. His print projects evolved from rigorous studies of straight line and color. Which brings us to this week’s WORK OF THE WEEK! WOW!, Distorted Cubes #2
Distorted Cubes #2 is a prime example of LeWitt’s interest in the line, cubes and seriality. LeWitt experiments with the illusion of volume on a two-dimensional surface. The cubes are examined through the lens of physical space. Each one highlighted by different perspectives of distance, height and lighting.
Each of the 21 distorted cubes is placed within one delineated square box, making up an uneven grid. The grid’s appeal lies in that it can extend in all directions infinitely into a space beyond the frame, but it also functions as a frame, which implies structure. The grid is modern through its non-decorative structure and order but also in its non-narrative qualities.
Sol Lewitt played a pivotal role driving art into a new and unchartered direction. His focus on space, form, line, volume, and color, created the Minimalist Movement. Along with other artists such as Frank Stella, and Ellsworth Kelly, the minimalists achieved a new philosophy in art theory, that although reactive to abstract expressionism, furthered the progression of art breaking away from traditional, representational art.

WOW! – Work of the Week – Alex Katz – Laura 1

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Alex Katz
Laura 1
2017
Archival pigment inks on Crane Museo Max 365 gsm fine art paper
46 x 30 1/2 in.
Edition of 100
Pencil signed and numbered

About the work:

Portraits are one of the great subjects of Alex Katz’s oeuvre. With his signature approach and style, he transforms his circle of family, friends and New York society figures into unforgettable icons. His works are defined by their flatness of color and form, their economy of line, and cool yet seductive emotional detachment. 

Katz is the ultimate master of the flat style. His works may appear simple, but rather they are complex studies of color and shading. A student of color theory, he expertly captures depth and dimension with contrasting and complimentary hues like no other artist. 

This week’s Work of the Week! WOW! is one of Katz’s most recent portraits, Laura 1. This work is the portrait of Laura Halzack, prima ballerina of the Paul Taylor Dance Company based in New York City. Alex Katz met Laura through Paul Taylor with whom he has collaborated with on over a dozen set and costume designs since 1960. 

Laura, as many of Katz’s portrait subjects is presented without context. In the compressed visual plane, she is placed against a background of a single dark hue, which contrasts with the delicate peach tone of her skin. No additional narrative is provided other than her first name. This lack of narrative heightens the enigmatic qualities of the dancer, and allows Laura to exist in and of herself. 

Influenced by film, television and billboard advertising, the composition of Laura 1 is like a cinematic close-up. The cropped view of the dancer’s profile is perfectly balanced with the black background. The work is cropped in a way that it seems Katz has captured a sincere, temporal moment, which he indeed has, given the ephemeral nature of dance. 

Katz’s distinction as an artist lies in the fascinating reductive, flat style. His mastery of color and minimalism is timeless. His portraits, also have a distinctive quality in that he always represents the society of which he is a part of and, as a whole, can almost be experienced as a family photo album. 

WOW! – Work of the Week – Jim Dine – Watercolored by Jim

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Jim Dine
Watercolored by Jim
2015
Watercolor and copperplate etching
42 x 56 1/2 in.
Edition of 6 unique hand-painted pieces
Pencil signed, dated, titled and numbered

About the work:

During the early 1960s, with Pop Art in full swing, one of its earliest champions, Jim Dine, had already moved away from its ideas and was striking out on his own. Marked by a compulsive repetition of subject matter yet tempered with humanity and warmth, the oeuvre that the artist has produced over the last 60 years forms one of the most original bodies of work in 20th- and 21st-century art.

Among his iconic images, hearts are prominently featured. Dine has laid undisputed claim to the simple shape, suggesting boundless possibilities endowed with complex meaning. While repetition was a common motif in Pop Art, Dine employed it to a very different end. Pop was playing with art as mass culture while Dine was imposing a personal, lyrical individualism into his faceless forms. A self-described romantic artist, Dine has embraced the heart as a template through which he could explore relationships of color, texture, and composition. It is a subject of his work that is invested with rich personal significance.

This week’s Work of the Week! WOW! is Watercolored by Jim. 

Dine painted his first heart in 1966, developed as a form of self-portraiture while he went through psychoanalytical treatment. The heart-themed works are defined by introspection and emotional vigor, continuously reinvented through the artist’s tactile brushwork, and inventive printmaking techniques. Dine uses the symbolism of the heart for its obvious connection to the strong emotions of love, but also for its values as a geometric framework within which dynamic color relationships and textures can be explored. 

The powerful presence of the two hearts in Watercolored by Jim suggests human interaction, the smoky texture is combined with soft fields of watered-down color suggest a complex delicacy. Despite its lightness, it is strong work, as Dine’s expressionist energy is freed from the form. The colors vibrate against one another, fill and bleed beyond the hearts outlines in an organic blending into dense layers. 

Dine has a distinct approach to printmaking, it provides him with an opportunity to focus his creative energy on small editions of works that are often experimental in technique and finished by hand. Watercolored by Jim is an edition of 6 unique hand-painted works with watercolor (hence the title) in which only the black lines are printed through copperplate etching. 

The work is a tour de force of Dine’s experimentation with innovative monotype and other printmaking techniques. The traditional etching techniques combined with hand-applied details result in this distinctive work that bridges printmaking and painting.

With this painterly work, Dine continues to reinvent the form. The artist’s assertive brushwork is heightened by a soft texture endowing one of his most iconic images with fresh and exciting energy.

WOW! – Work of the Week – Richard Anuszkiewicz – Temple of the Golden Red

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Richard Anuszkiewicz
Temple of the Golden Red
1985
Screenprint
32 x 24 in.
Edition of 175
Pencil signed, dated and numbered

About the work:

“I’m interested in making something romantic out of a very, very mechanistic geometry. Geometry and color represent to me an idealized, classical place that’s very clear and very pure.“ Richard Anuszkiewicz

Richard Anuszkiewicz was a central figure, along with Briget Riley and Victor Vasarely, in the Op Art movement. As a graduate student at Yale, he was mentored by the color theorist Josef Albers who would steer him on a course toward pure abstraction, grounded in the power of color. Most of his work trends away from personal emotion and drama, seeking rather visual investigations of formal structural and color effects. He made extensive use of ‘simultaneous contrast’ – where two colors, side by side, interact with one another to change our perception of them accordingly.

Among his most famed suites is the Temple Series; mesmerizing works, saturated with vibrant color arranged in geometric abstract compositions. The Temple Series originated after a 1981 trip to Egypt. He was inspired by the geometries of sacred temples,specifically those located in the Valley of the Kings. As is characteristic of most of his works, there are no specific references to individual structures, instead he uses the geometric framework as a space of color experimentation. The works in the series have been interpreted as illustrating visionary architect Buckminster Fuller’s notion of ‘Tensegrity’ – the balance between the forces of tension and integrity inherent in a physical structure. 

This week’s Work of the Week! WOW! from the Temple Series is Temple of the Golden Red. 

Temple of the Golden Red is a quintessential example of Anuszkiewicz’s mature style. Incorporating a repeating pattern of vertically oriented rectangles surrounded by concentric lines of startlingly different color. It contains three central rectangles of saturated crimson surrounded by lines of alternating but as equally saturated yellow and black. Symmetry is essential in Anuszkiewicz’s work, and by juxtaposing opposite colors of equal saturation, he accomplishes a visual fluctuation between figure and ground, creating a vibrating or pulsating sensation in the eye. The result is a release of energy, a transformation of color into motion. Like all great work that depends in large measure on color for its impact, the intensity lays in the way the eye and brain interpret visual information.

As with most artworks, Anuszkiewicz’s work is much more powerful in person. From Temple of the Golden Red emanates a profound luminosity, appearing as if lit from an inner source. New York Times art critic Holland Cotter described Anuszkiewicz’s works by stating, “The drama – and that feels like the right word – is in the subtle chemistry of complementary colors, which makes the geometry glow as if light were leaking out from behind it.” The artwork also packs a powerful monumentality, a result of its architectonic framing that gives the illusion of standing in front of a physical temple. Despite that the work is inspired from a trip to Egypt, the ‘fluting’ can seem to have more in common with classical ancient Greek columns. 

Within the boundaries Anuszkiewicz set for himself—vertical bars of color surrounded by the pinstriped framework, the range of effects achieved is remarkable. The colors appear to blaze forth or recede into the distance and the choice of colors projects a mood, in this case, a jazzy up-tempo. Despite the restless optical power of the piece, it is thoroughly classical.

WOW! – Work of the Week – Jasper Johns – Device

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Jasper Johns
Device
1971-72
Lithograph
33 1/2 x 29 in.
Edition of 62
Pencil signed, dated and numbered

About the work:

“I tend to like things that already exist.” Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns is the world’s most critically acclaimed living artist. His work bridges the immediate post-World War II modernist trends of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism with subsequent movements of Pop art, Minimalism, and Conceptual art. 

Johns was ushered into the New York art scene in 1953, when he met Robert Rauschenberg. The two artists shared an intense relationship, both romantic and artistic, from 1954 to 1961. They had neighboring studio spaces and deeply influenced each other’s artwork, exchanging ideas and techniques that would allow them to break from Abstract Expressionism. Their relationship would lead to Johns’ discovery by famed art dealer Leo Castelli, who, while visiting Rauschenberg’s studio met Johns and saw his work. Castelli offered the young Jasper Johns his first solo show on the spot. It was during his first exhibition that Alfred Barr, the founding director of the MoMA, purchased a number pieces that were on display, instantly making Jasper Johns a force in the art world.

Johns’ breakthrough style was to appropriate popular iconography in his works with a rich treatment of  the surface as lush and painterly. By representing common objects and images in the realm of fine art, Johns broke down the boundaries traditionally separating fine art and everyday life. However, rather than direct representation or abstraction, Johns made signs, like flags and targets, iconic images in his works. The “things the mind already knows” were his ideal subject because of the varied meanings each carried with it. This would lay the foundation for the Pop art movement’s aesthetic embrace of commodity culture, paving the path for Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist among many, many other post-war artists. 

While Johns continued to produce paintings that incorporated Abstract Expressionism’s gestures and color blocking, he shifted his focus from the finished image to the concept behind it. His process, which he believed to be the actual art, took on greater importance. The artist made a seamless transition into print making. For Johns, printmaking was a medium that encouraged experimentation through the ease with which it allowed for repeat endeavors. His innovations in screen printing, lithography, and etching revolutionized the field. 

As the Pop art movement grew around him, Johns left behind the colorful works filled with familiar gestures and images and turned to a darker palette. Some critics attribute the shift away from color and toward the grays, blacks, and whites that dominate many of his canvases from the early 1960s to the rocky end of his relationship with Rauschenberg. 

This week’s Work of the Week! WOW! is Jasper Johns’ Device.

Created in 1971-72, Device masterfully plays with different tones of grey, white and beige. The works that use what Johns called “the device,” were made from two stretcher bars attached to a canvas frame with butterfly screws, creating a mechanical arm, that would be used to scrape the paint on the surface in a circular shape. All of these elements from the “real” world undercut the traditional idea of a painting as an illusion. The development of the device theme in Johns’ work progressed to incorporate other themes, such as the abundant use of text. His techniques stress conscious control rather than spontaneity.

Over the past fifty years Johns has created a body of rich and complex work. His rigorous attention to the themes of popular imagery and abstraction has set the standards for American art. Constantly challenging the technical possibilities of printmaking, Johns laid the groundwork for a wide range of experimental artists that came after him.