Jasper Johns

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Jasper Johns

• Collection of Works
• GATE Summer Academy
• EMCSD

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The Artist

• My work is largely concerned with relations
  between seeing and knowing, seeing and saying,
  seeing and believing.
• --Jasper Johns, 1965

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1972- Untitled
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Jasper Johns

• The artist sitting on a stool in front of his
  print edition, Numerals in the Gemini G.E.L.
  studios, 1968

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Thoughts on Creativity

• The objects that Jasper Johns paints-everyday
  objects such as flashlights, light bulbs, and
  American flags- are chosen precisely because it
  is so hard to see them.
• At a certain point I realized that certain
  things that were around me were things that I
  didnt look at. So you recognize a flag is a flag
  and its very rare that you actually look at the
  surface of it to see what it is. This aspect of
  things interested me and I began to work with it,
  to see how I could look at things that I was
  accustomed to looking at, but not really seeing.
• -p.32 Sparks of Genius, The 13 Thinking
  Tools of the Worlds Most Creative People.
  Root-Bernstein, Robert and Michele 1999

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Diver 1962
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Ground Breaking

• In 1955, Jasper Johns created a series of
  paintings of single numbers, which he called
  figures.

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Paint by Numbers
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Is a number always a number?

• By choosing numbers as subject matter, Johns
  deprived them of their practical function,
  reinventing them as formats for movements of
  paint, color, line, and surface.

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Reflection

• 1. How do signs and symbols impart meaning?
• 2.What are some symbols and signs that have
  meaning as they stand alone, apart from other
  numbers and letters?

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Untitiled
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Designs on a Plane
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The Power of Observation

• The keenest observers make use of every kind of
  sensory observation. In fact, the greatest
  insights often come to individuals who are able
  to appreciate the sublimity of the mundane, the
  deeply surprising and meaningful beauty in
  everyday things.
• --p. 40, Sparks of Genius, The 13 Thinking Tools
  of the Worlds Most Creative People.
  Root-Bernstein, Robert and Michele 1999

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Painted Bronze, 1960
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False Start
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1962, Study for Skin
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Reflection Questions

• 1. What do you think Jasper Johns was trying to
  say in Study for Skin, 1962?
• 2. What media do you think he used to create the
  piece?

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Target
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Target

• In The Target, Johns is echoing Andy Warhols
  sentiment of people becoming products.
• Celebrities become targets of the public and the
  media.
• The hidden and sheltered faces represent the idea
  that we dont really know who these people are,
  despite reading about them in the media and
  seeing them on TV.

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Reflection Questions

• Who can you think of that has become a target?
• In what ways does a celebrity lose his anonymity
  and freedom?
• By reading about a person, do you really know who
  they are?

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Map 1963
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Map 1963

• Now, most of us are familiar with the map of the
  united States of America.
• Jasper Johns challenges us to see the familiar in
  a different way.
• Maybe it does look like this from an airplane
  window, minus the state names. Maybe it looks
  like this from the depths of his imagination.
• Because the minds senses that control of the
  senses of the body skew and filter all that we
  experience, objective observation is not
  possibleso observing is a form of thinking and
  thinking is a form of observation.
• -p.43, Sparks of Genius, The 13 Thinking Tools of
  the Worlds Most Creative People. Root-Bernstein,
  Robert and Michele 1999

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Chocolate Chip Pizza

• What we already know affects our ability to
  observe. For example, a museum in San Francisco
  has a picture of a large slice of pizza, its
  scratch and sniff. The hitch is that it smells
  like a chocolate chip cookie.
• Most of us like both of these foods, but
  observers report the experience is nauseating and
  unpleasant.

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Periscope 1963
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Perilious Night 1962
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Summer 1985
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Reflection Questions

• 1. What do you think may have been happening in
  the Summer of 1985 that wouldve inspired Jasper
  Johns to paint this?
• 2. What objects do you observe in this painting?
• 3. What emotions do these objects invoke?