![]() ![]() In a famous statement, Johns explained that he sought as the subjects of his paintings at that time "things that the mind already knows. Kozloff, Jasper Johns, New York, 1967, p. Then I of course realized I could do the numbers that way too. I saw a chart in a book that had that arrangement of the alphabet. You know the Gray Alphabet painting (fig. The first number paintings were just single figures. Regarding the origin of these works, Johns later told Walter Hopps: In addition, he made drawings, a lithograph, and two sculpmetal reliefs of numbers. The Ganz White Numbers is one of the last paintings in the series, although Johns occasionally returned to this subject later in his career. He made seven other examples, including a polychrome version in 1958-59 (fig. These were purchased almost immediately, one by Alfred Barr for The Museum of Modern Art and the other by the curator Dorothy Miller. Johns made two number paintings in 11 by 11 grids in 1957. Their matte surfaces increase the physicality and the immediacy of these pictures: one looks at a Johns painting, not into it. He may have selected this unusual medium for its plasticity and viscosity, which gives his paintings a thick, dense texture. More often than not, he used encaustic-pigment suspended in beeswax. Typically, he painted his number and alphabet pictures in restricted, almost monochromatic, palettes. 2) in the second series, beginning in 1957, he depicted all the numbers from 0 to 9 which he arranged sequentially in large 11 by 11 grids (with one space in each row left blank). In the first series, he represented only one number per canvas (fig. Johns, perhaps more than any other artist of his generation, brought about a paradigm shift in the development of modern art without his works of the 1950s, the later course of painting and sculpture-especially minimalism and pop-indubitably would have had a different and less fertile development.Ä«etween 19, Johns made two series of paintings of numbers. 1), they marked a radical break both from the gestural lyricism of Abstract Expressionism and from the European tradition of Picasso and other modern masters. Along with his images of targets and flags (fig. Johns's paintings of numbers and alphabets are among his most original and influential works.
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