Jasper Johns. Catherine Craft

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СКАЧАТЬ a toothbrush has molars where its bristles should be, while in The Critic Sees, a pair of eyeglasses frame not eyes but mouths, lips parted as if in conversation. More subtle plays of humor involving objects are at work in Fool’s House and Untitled (1964–65), which both contain a broom. The attendant painterly sweeping marks make the household implement into a giant paintbrush, while suspending it from a hook suggests that it too could be used to inscribe a circle like one of Johns’s devices.

      Along with brooms and devices that scrape paint, Johns’s paintings of the early 1960s, such as In Memory of My Feelings, Good Time Charley, and Water Freezes, began to include such objects as rulers, cups, forks, spoons, and thermometers. When he compared the paintings in which these items appear with his earlier work, he explained the difference in a distinctive way:

      The more recent work of mine seems to be involved with the nature of various technical devices, not questioning them in terms of their relation to the concept of accuracy. It seems to me that the effect of the more recent work is that it is more related to feeling or emotion or… (there is a pause)… Let’s say emotional or erotic content in that there is no superimposition of another point of view immediately in terms of a stroke of a brush, so that one responds directly to the physical situation…[50]

      Exploring the nature of various technical devices may seem distant from the emotional or erotic content that Johns characterised as the result of this process, but it’s worth noting that most of the objects that appear in these paintings are scaled to the human body in some way: eating utensils, household items such as coat hangers, and even the rulers, with twelve inches making a foot. The degree of physical intimacy suggested by this network of associations, however, also alludes to another change in Johns’s art during this period. Although some of his previous works could be thought of in terms of a sort of subtle expressive content – the vulnerability of Target with Plaster Casts, a sense of emotional withdrawal in Canvas, the stolid melancholy of Tennyson – around 1961, much of Johns’s art for a time struck an undeniably bleak emotional tone. Johns himself recognised this charged expressive element but declined to specify it, saying only that at this point in his work, “the mood changes.”[51]

      Out the Window, 1959. Encaustic and collage on canvas, 139.7 × 101.6 cm. Collection of David Geffen, Los Angeles. Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

      Thermometer, 1959. Oil on canvas with thermometer, 131.4 × 97.8 cm. Seattle Art Museum and Collection of Bagley and Virginia Wright, Seattle. Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

      Changing Moods

      1961 was another important year for Johns. He made his first trip to Europe. He purchased the house in Edisto Beach and began living and working there for part of the year. The house was near the water, and its relative isolation and the changing light created a different set of conditions for his art. But along with these developments came another, less happy change – the end of his relationship with Rauschenberg. Both artists declined to talk about what caused their relationship to end, although friends had seen signs of a growing strain for some months. When the break finally came, it was sufficiently bitter that for many years Johns and Rauschenberg avoided each other’s company.

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      Примечания

      1

      Unless otherwise noted, biographical information about Johns comes from the chronology compiled by Lilian Tone in Kirk Varnedoe, Jasper Johns: A Retrospective (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1996).

      2

      Jasper Johns: Writings, Sketchbook Notes, Interviews, edited by Kirk Varnedoe, compiled by Christel Hollevet (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1996), 122. Hereafter in notes JJ: WSNI.

      3

      JJ: WSNI, 106.

      4

      Barnett Newman, “The Sublime is Now (1948),” in Barnett Newman, Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews, John P. O’Neill, ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 173.

      5

      JJ: WSNI, 82.

      6

      Kirk Varnedoe, “Fire: Johns’s Work as Seen and Used by American Artists,” in Kirk Varnedoe, Jasper Johns: A Retrospective, 96.

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Примечания

1

Unless otherwise noted, biographical information about Johns comes from the chronology compiled by Lilian Tone in Kirk Varnedoe, Jasper Johns: A Retrospective (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1996).

2

Jasper Johns: Writings, Sketchbook Notes, Interviews, edited by Kirk Varnedoe, compiled by Christel Hollevet (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1996), 122. Hereafter in notes JJ: WSNI.

3

JJ: WSNI, 106.

4

Barnett Newman, “The Sublime is Now (1948),” in Barnett Newman, Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews, John P. O’Neill, ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 173.

5

JJ: WSNI, 82.

6

Kirk Varnedoe, “Fire: Johns’s Work as Seen and Used by American Artists,” in Kirk Varnedoe, Jasper Johns: A Retrospective, 96.

7

Emile de Antonio and Mitch Tuchman, Painters Painting: A Candid History of the Modern Art Scene, 1940–1970 (New York: Abbeville Press, 1984), 96.

8

JJ: WSNI, 187.

9

JJ: WSNI, 162–63.

10

JJ: WSNI, 165.

11

JJ: WSNI, 220.

12

JJ: WSNI, 145.

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