New exhibit offers intellectual rigor

by Jason Engelhart

Tuesday, February 5, 2008 23:22

Last week, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art celebrated the opening of its newest exhibition, “Jasper Johns: The Prints.”

The exhibition traces the entirety of Johns’ almost five-decade career as a printmaker, beginning with the 1960 lithograph “Target” and continuing to 2007’s “Within.”

The best way to categorize Johns’ art is with a quote by Johns himself, used by MMoCA curator Richard H. Axson in his description of the exhibition: “Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.”

Since Johns’ work is as much about what he does with objects as the objects themselves, it is helpful to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of the methods he uses before looking at his work.

Fortunately, the exhibition has a corner dedicated to education entitled “What is a Print?” This display shows three of Johns’ methods — intaglio, screen printing and lithography — alongside accompanying prints of the letter “A” made using each technique.

After this primer, it is much easier to appreciate the playfulness and sense of adventure with which Johns approaches his work.

This sort of background knowledge helps in understanding the significance of Johns’ use of other media in his prints. His creatively placed, printed representation of the “Mona Lisa” in the 1987 print “The Seasons (Summer)” is an excellent example.

By tilting the “Mona Lisa” on its side, placing it beside some of his own artwork and reproducing it in a different medium, Johns encourages the viewer to think about what the classic means in this new context. He does not merely copy the work of others; he takes samples and makes them serve as an impetus for thoughts and reactions they would never have incited in their original form.

Another way Johns allows the viewers to think new thoughts and challenge their preconceived notions is through his representation of readymade objects.

In his 1977 lithograph “Savarin,” he depicts a coffee can atop a black table [CR1] filled with a variety of paintbrushes. Certain characteristics of the work, however, allow for interpretation beyond this rudimentary description.

First, Johns’ rendering of the can reinforces the fact that it is an image of an object rather than the object itself. It has an imperfect surface with blotches of color missing from its exterior. Furthermore, though it is shaded to give it depth, the shading is inconsistent, drawing attention to the artist’s touch.

The background of the image also encourages the viewer to look at the work with a critical eye. By setting the coffee can against a background of streaks of primary colors rather than, for example, a grocery store shelf, Johns de-contextualizes the object. This gives the viewer a chance to consider it from a different critical angle.

Through such unorthodox rendering of the readymade item and its customary setting, Johns invites the viewer to reconsider the relationship between object and context, but he is not satisfied to consider this relationship just once. Through his prints Johns rigorously examines and reexamines this theme. In his series “The Seasons,” he puts a variety of objects — among them a gray, featureless human figure and a monochromatic severed arm — through machinations that draw attention to humans’ experience of the four seasons.

Above all, “Jasper Johns: The Prints” is about challenging assumptions. Johns takes various media, works of art and readymade objects and puts them in different contexts, allowing the reader to reconsider the conventional interpretation of the object. Viewers may find this de-contextualization either illuminating or unsettling, but it is sure to evoke some feeling in anyone who approaches Johns’ work with an open mind.

Gallery goers who might find themselves uninspired by his exhaustive exploration of flags, targets and seasons need not feel unsophisticated, though. To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a coffee can is just a coffee can.