MWW Artwork of the Day (4/5/16)Jasper Johns (American, b. 1930)Spring (1986)Encaustic on canvas, 190

MWW Artwork of the Day (4/5/16)Jasper Johns (American, b. 1930)Spring (1986)Encaustic on canvas, 190.5 x 127 cm.Private CollectionIn 1985–86, the ever-eclectic Johns made four 75 x 50 inch encaustic paintings – Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter – which might be read as an allegory of his life and interests, as well as referencing a longstanding artistic and literary tradition of works about the four seasons and four ages of man.The series dates from a period when the artist was moving between residences and in one of the many turning-points in his career. So, in a sense the paintings can be seen as a collaged form of “taking stock” when one is moving, and a taking stock that occurs at a certain point in life. Each painting has a similar structure.  A silhouette – presumably of the artist himself – dominates the canvas, perhaps a evocation, perhaps not, of a 1953 Picasso painting (The Shadow) in which Picasso’s shadow falls across the floor of his studio. Each features art works by the artist or in his possession, as well as other cherished possessions.  And the “season” of each is economically evoked in a few strokes, as in the streaks of rain here.Critical interpretation of the works vary widely.  John Russell in his NY Times review thought that “in ‘Spring’ there are many references to the way in which a given image can secrete a secondary meaning that turns its first one inside out. There is a version of the 19th-century visual conundrum in which a drawing of a pretty young woman can also be read as a portrait of an androgynous old crone. Fullbodied goblets, read in reverse, turn out to hold human profiles captive. A schematic drawing of a decoy duck relates to a well-known passage in Wittgenstein… If 'The Seasons’ does have a central meaning. it may well be that catastrophes can be borne, however awkwardly and painfully, and that a shattered self can be put together again. The potential of regenerative feeling, like the potential of painting itself, is ever-present, if we know how to get through to it.”Jill Johnston, in her monograph “Jasper Johns: Privileged Information,” focusses on the theme of autobiography in Johns’ work when assessing the “Four Seasons.”  Key to her analysis is her identification of the motif from the Isenheim Altarpiece: “It is even more difficult to see here since Johns deliberately obscures its presence by covering it with the cross-hatching that evokes the earlier painting Between Clock and Bed as well as the Corpse and Mirror paintings and others in that patterned, cross-hatched mode. The Isenheim altarpiece, an extremely large work with several "openings” (every time you “open” an altarpiece, you reveal another set of images – most open once; this one opened three times –  was created for a monastic order which treated the victims of St. Anthony’s fire. In the Renaissance, patients were supposed to look at the repulsive figure in the painting, see in him the identification which he makes with St. Anthony, and through St. Anthony, an identification with the sufferings of Christ.  Ultimately, this suffering would lead to salvation if the patient had faith.  In Johns’ painting, the redemption which would come through religious belief is replaced by a redemption which comes through art.  Johns does something unusual with this because he places himself in the position of victim and the position of savior. At the same time, his literal presence in the painting takes the form of a shadow, an insubstantial form with no body. The Four Seasons would therefore seem to unite two themes of Johns’ work: the theme of denial of self (in earlier works, denial of objecthood and denial of meaning, as when he uses paints the letters “red” in blue paint) and the identity of self (object, word, meaning). Whereas the early paintings express these themes in linguistic or semiotic terms, the later paintings express them in a more personal and autobiographical mode, making the fundamental issue throughout Johns’ work the question of where does identity come from.“Johns is one of the featured artists in the the MWW exhibit/gallery:* American Moderns V: Pop Goes the Art World -- source link

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