Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting, 1955-1965
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Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting, 1955-1965 Details
From Publishers Weekly Rather than restating the fact of Johns' enormous influence during this highly productive decade, Weiss demonstrates it through a discussion of Johns's art-making process in this hefty monograph, produced in association with the National Gallery of Art. In five essays, Weiss and company focus on four "motifs"-"the target; the 'device' (the pivotal slat used to scrape paint); the stenciled naming of colors; and the trace of imprint of the body"-with illustrations throughout and a long central section devoted entirely to artwork. In Weiss's essay, he traces the dynamics of Johns's working life-in its process and context-investigating among other aspects the relationship between Johns's work and his contemporary Jackson Pollock's: "Pollock's compass is an instrument of release. ... Johns' compass is an instrument of containment, the body compressed into the mechanical 'actuality' of two-dimensional space." Not all of the essays are so tightly observed, as in Kathryn Tuma's "The Color and Compass of Things," which tends toward vague consideration of Johns's "playful verbal wit" and "highly sophisticated sense of visual irony." Despite the occasional art-class generalization, this volume has enough detail and richly reproduced artwork to make it a winning, illuminating addition to any art library. 80 halftone, 170 color illustrations. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Read more About the Author Jeffrey Weiss is Curator and Head of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. John Elderfield is Chief Curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Carol Mancusi-Ungaro is Director of Conservation at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Robert Morris is an American artist and contemporary of Johns. Kathryn Tuma is Assistant Professor of Modern Art at Johns Hopkins University. Read more
Reviews
Published to accompany an exhibition held at the National Gallery in Washington (and later at the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland) and concentrating on the pivotal decade 1955-1965 when Johns produced his most famous works, this catalogue is worth it mainly because of the quality of the illustrations. So much has been written on Johns's art that it is sometimes refreshing to be able to pause in front of his works and just enjoy them for their pure pictorial quality (color, texture...). This book enables you to do just that. Then if you want to read the text, you will find it well written, clever (especially at the end of the book, where paintings are analysed and interpreted one by one and in detail), sometimes a bit far-fetched, but just like everything else I know which has dealt with Johns's art (see Chrichton, Varnedoe,etc...).
