Sweeping Motions

Something caught my attention today in my research about Jasper Johns. A google search of Racing Thoughts, the piece LaValle wrote about yesterday, led me to a description of a phenomenon that is a symptom of a psychotic disorder that people diagnosed with bipolar disorder sometimes get. They hear things quickly pulsing through their minds, things like words of a song or the grocery list etc. It is not voices, as in schizophrenia but is something else, termed “racing thoughts”, it can last for hours and seems painful. Johns’ use of words in title to describe his work led to a connection to Wittgenstein, a philosopher of the late 19th century who questioned the effects of language on people’s visual perceptions. One of W’s ideas is that you could prove that things are true or they are false, with no third alternative. He wanted to do this with ideas.Imagine a picture explaining an idea, no words necessary, this is what W was going for. Here is how he said to get there: if a landscape painter’s points on a canvas are not correlated with points in space the picture would not succeed to say anything, likewise no sentence constructed out of them would say anything. Therefore each would lack sense. But, if they were given the necessary correlations they would make sense and thus be true. Language is the same, if something threw a light on logic it ought to also throw a light on the structure of ordinary factual discourse. W questioned how language affected what people saw. He wanted to separate words from meaning and used art to describe this idea. The big plan, remember, was to do away with explanation. In 1961 Johns read these philosophical writings, He said
“Art should not come from the mind, but from the spark between the world and the eye that creates, according to Johns, "the final suggestion [that] has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless statement."
Then, in 1962, he painted Fool’s House, to reflect some of these theories Wittgenstein wrote about.

The broom hangs by a hinge. It was used to make the marks we see in the pattern, it was dipped in the paint that makes the painting that the broom made. My description is starting to sound like a children’s song lyric isn’t it? The broom is marking it’s own path, and words are used to label everything on the canvas from a cup hanging on a hook to a towel. Arrows are used, so we’re sure to associate the word with its object by use of this handy symbol. The piece is a diagram, like a bar graph or a pie chart of what is in the fools house. The fool must be Johns, to whom these items must have belonged. As one writer said of the piece, “The oversimplification and literalism of the works are rife with dead pan humor mixed with somber meditation on the meaning of things.”
The best part of all, for fools like me, is the fact that the Portland Art Museum has a print of this piece and will be displaying it in the upcoming show “Word and Image” which will be up this fall. Now you will be all brushed up when it gets here.

Jasper Johns ~ Racing Thoughts, another gray piece

Racing Thoughts is a drawing that was included in the show "Jasper Johns: Gray" that I mentioned two days ago. Like so many of his drawings it was completed after the original painting of the same name. The painting was done in 1983 and the drawing a year later. Look closely and you'll see the work is divided into a diptych. On the left are the cross-hatches that became synonymous with his work. The right side is the wall of one of his homes. Look for the nail that casts a shadow. That abstract rectangle near the nail some say is either by Robert Rauschenberg or Barnett Newman – you choose. Right next to it is a danger sign with skull and cross bones, an interesting companion piece.

If you haven't already seen the faucet to Johns' bathtub take a look in the bottom right hand corner. Visually, let your eye move diagonally to the left and you'll see an image of Leo Castelli. Castelli was Johns' art dealer for many years and was a major influence in his life. While you're looking at Castelli, take a peek over at the Mona Lisa. Those two smiles are equally enigmatic. Down below the Mona Lisa are two vases. The white one some say has two human profiles. The images on it if you look just right are Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, again the image deciphering is left to the viewer.

Racing Thoughts has many images, icons for the viewer to ponder. Imagine yourself in that bathtub, thinking about life. What is real, what is imaginary? In the end is your imagination any less real than what may have actually happened?

Jasper Johns on the Simpsons

Jasper Johns starred as himself in the Simpsons, episode 1019 in April of 1999. In the epidosde Homer becomes a conceptual artist, "Mom and Pop Art", see a clip here.
After Homer loses his temper building a BBQ he tries to throw it out when an art dealer tells him he has real art talent. He goes to school, decides he wants to create something truly groundbreaking so he floods Springfield, making it something like Venice. (sound familiar? Pearl district canal project, I swear someone mentioned that.) Everyone, including Jasper Johns, thinks his idea is a hit and all is well in Springfield.
The thought of Johns playing a part in The Simpsons is a happy one. Another happy moment of a day full of happy moments, like this morning on the radio I heard a snippet of Obama's recent speech about free education for service men and women. The bravest of our country have earned free education, he said, and it is more than just a benefit to them, it is a benefit to every one of us. Johns served two years in the army during the Korean war. He had very little education, three semesters at the University of South Carolina where his teachers told him to go to New York, perhaps the best thing his education did for him. After the war he didn't go back to college, he went to the Big Apple, fell in love, worked and became, according to Charlie Rose and Nan Rosenthal, the greatest living artist today.
I am all for free education, for everyone really. It seems like a no brainer. Otherwise we entertain the idea of Venice canals in Portland Oregon. We shouldn't be taking the Simpsons literally- it seems there is truth in every line, but you have to know it before you see it to really get it. Groening and Johns have a lot in common that way.

Jasper Johns ~ The Critic Sees, More Gray

Jasper Johns created The Critic Sees in 1964 four years before he made The Critic Smiles. Like in The Critic Smiles Johns has once again brought his wit forward for all of us to see and enjoy. The eyes behind a pair of eyeglass frames are replaced with talking mouths – talking and seeing become the same. Much like the gold teeth in The Critic Smiles this work is an art world visual pun. It's also gray like The Critic Smiles – gray being one of Jasper Johns' favorite colors. Gray over the years has become not just a color for Johns but the "essence of a long metaphysical journey, an exploration of “the condition of gray itself.”

The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago were the venues last year for "Jasper Johns: Gray" an exhibition of Johns' work that focussed on his use of gray throughout his career. At one point when asked about gray and the exhibition itself, Johns answered in classic sphinx style:

“Yes, gray has been important to me. But I don’t tend to think of it as separate from the rest of my work. ... At first I had some idea that the absence of color made the work more physical. Early on I was very involved with the notion of the painting as an object and tended to attack that idea from different directions.”

There are a number of videos here on the internet that will show you the enormity of the Gray show at the Metropolitan and the Art Institute, some explaining a bit more about the work. One of the best videos is this one with Jerry Saltz from New York Magazine. Saltz will take you on a tour of the exhibit, picking the pieces he thinks will show Jasper Johns' grays in the best and most humorous light. And humor is always a good thing on an art tour, especially when the exhibit would at first appear to be monochromatic. Saltz starts after a 30 second commercial (there is no such thing as a free lunch or video in this case.)


Another video about the show is Charlie Rose interviewing Nan Rosenthal, Senior Consultant in the Metropolitan's Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art. Rose's interview of Rosenthal is also insightful if less humorous than the Saltz. Click here for the link for Mr. Rose's adventure with Jasper John's Gray.

The Critic Smiles

I have been contemplating the title; The Critic Smiles. Johns is quoted as saying "Whatever I do seems artificial and false, to me." You can see, like most of us, he was his own worst critic.
If you look closely at the toothbrush where there should be bristles there are gold teeth. It is a toothbrush whose brush is made of false teeth made to look like real teeth, but gold. A google search shows images of gold toothed rappers and some people from around the world, no wealthy gamblers with turquoise rings and big belt buckles, which is what I was looking for.
The thing he might be trying to say is, you ought not trust a brush made of gold teeth, it will not clean your teeth and it isn't something that belongs to you. It doesn't even seem to serve a purpose, except to bring to mind something you know; which for me, in this case, is that it is better to have real teeth than false and that in order to do so you should brush them with a toothbrush that has bristles.
The critic is all about sharing the sort of information you have to find for yourself, it is never about what the critic actually does, because the critic is just a bunch of clues stacked together in an unusable way, but if you reconstruct the critic for yourself you will find a real message there.
I would like to quote Jasper Johns one more time, in my own defense. so here goes:
"Everyone is of course free to interpret the work in his own way. I think seeing a picture is one thing and interpreting it is another."
Ahhhh, now I don't feel so bad.

Jasper Johns ~ The Critic Smiles, part of Closer to Home

Having spent most of my travel budget for this year, I was disappointed yesterday to read that there's a Jasper Johns' exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum (probably won't be going). But then I remembered that The Critic Smiles, our piece of the week here at Fifty Two Pieces, is part of an exhibit entitled "Closer to Home" at the Portland Art Museum. Not getting the same press as the Escher or Tattoo exhibits, "Closer to Home" is a very solid one and includes many etchings and classic lead reliefs. The Critic Smiles, one of those reliefs hangs just to the right of the elevator in the Center for Modern and Contemporary Art. Reaching back into time, Johns could have easily been referring to Sir Walter Scott's famous quote: “Court not the critic's smile nor dread his frown”.


Other prints in the show include The Seasons (Summer) one of four etchings with aquatint of all the seasons. Jasper Johns created these in the mid '80s. Like The Critic Smiles, Summer uses an artistic and literary tradition employed by many – the four seasons and the four ages of man. When you look at Summer or any of the other etchings of the seasons, you'll find John's shadow, an imprint of his arm and also a palm that marks the progress of the seasons and the aging of man. In addition, Johns has incorporated a small hummingbird in Summer, as well as a Mona Lisa and any number of other appropriated images. As a side note, Johns' shadow was originally traced from a template made by a friend in the strong sunlight of Saint-Martin in the French West Indies. Enjoy Summer in the cool air conditioning of the Portland Art Museum.

The Critic Smiles

The piece of the week is Jasper John's 1969 The Critic Smiles. It is embossed lead relief, with gold and tin foil additions. A toothbrush sits on a ledge engraved with "the critic smiles".
This is high time for a trip to the Seattle Art Museum where the show "Target Practice, Painting Under Attack" is up until September 7th. See some Jasper Johns there. Here is a video from the Seattle Art Museum website that should make any critic really smile: