Jasper Johns: the examined life - Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York - Cover Story

Art in America, April, 1997 by Roni Feinstein

The problem with the work of this period, I think, resides first in Johns's lack of a consistent direction, and then in certain failings (primary among them being an impenetrability of content and intention) inherent in what I believe to have been his chosen path: the mining of the typographic version of Duchamp's narrative The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (known as the Green Box) as a source for much of his work. In 1964, Johns had openly revealed his continued preoccupation with the art and thought of Duchamp in the complex, multipart According to What, based on the Dadaist's last painting, Tu m' (Duchamp's profile and the mark of a Bachelor's ejaculatory "shot" appear on a hinged panel at the lower left in Johns's painting). To an extent still not recognized in the literature, for the better part of the next decade, Johns translated Duchamp's Green Box, an encoded story of sexual arousal, frustration and death, into the hermetic forms of his art. The paintings Screen Piece 3, Wall Piece and Voice 2 shown at MOMA, for example, all feature a silk-screened image of a foot-long fork accompanied by the words "fork should be 7" long." This image corresponds to Duchamp's instruction, Hook. At the top of the glass a sort of fork ... must fall .... (This fork will be an ordinary hook considerably enlarged.)"(15)

Johns's painting once again gathered momentum -- as well as formal unity -- when he moved into the extended period of crosshatch canvases in the early '70s. Although references to Duchamp continue to be found in some of the early works of the series (as in Dutch Wives with its Bachelor's "shot" and masturbatory content),(16) Johns's exploration of themes of sexuality and death soon moved from the carnal to a spiritual plane. The title, triptych format and handling of forms in Weeping Women (1975) has led several writers to suggest that the painting may refer to traditional Christian themes -- the three Marys and the Crucifixion of Christ.(17) The three panels feature elongated, dramatically animated hatching strokes, as well as dotted fines, scraped lines, drips and scumbles. Some of the lines suggest piercing rays of (divine?) light. The sense of figuration is strong, particularly in the central panel in which several iron imprints appear on either side of the "figure," seeming to imply that it has been pinioned to the surface. In the panel to the right, imprints of circles overlapping drips of paint have been seen both as breasts and eyes spilling tears, an interpretation that would seem to be reinforced by Johns' use of similar motifs in his paintings of the early, '90s.(18)

In the Cicada drawing (1979), and the Tantric Detail and Dancers on a Plane paintings that follow, Johns moves from Christian iconography to Buddhist images of death and regeneration, inspired by Tantric symbols as well as by a Nepalese painting of the deity Samvara in a dance of copulation.(19) Johns has said that at the time he painted these works, he was "thinking about issues like life and death, whether I could even survive."(20) A continued concern with mortality is demonstrated in Between the Clock and the Bed, a series inspired by Edward Munch's late self-portrait of this title which contemplates the same theme. Johns's interest in Munch at this transitional point in his career is telling, particularly in hot of the direction he was to pursue: Munch's art was devoted to a content of self -- to exploring personal angst and pain, sexual awakening, and childhood experience and trauma.