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In 1984, Jasper Johns suggested to an interviewer that he had made a critical shift in his working process. "In my early work," he said, "I tried to hide my personality, my psychological state, my emotions...I sort of stuck to my guns for a while, but eventually it seemed like a losing battle. Finally, one must simply drop the reserve." His paintings of the 1980s and 90s bear this out: their imagery often includes objects and locations in his present studio and home, as well as allusions to memories of his childhood. These motifs are reiterated, altered, reworked and quoted in the context of new compositions, forming layered and complex spaces of recollection that merge past and present. This profusely illustrated volume, published in conjunction with an exhibition of paintings, prints and drawings organized by the Walker Art Center, is the first to look broadly at this period in Johns' career. All of the artist's major bodies of work from the past two decades--including those based on the Seasons, Green Angel and Catenary motifs--are covered in this study, with special consideration given to imagery appropriated from Picasso and Manet. Many of the works are published here for the first time, making this an invaluable tool for the study of Johns' work.Edited by Joan Rothfuss.~Essays by Richard Shiff, Victor Stoichita, ~Foreword by Kathy Halbreich.Hardcover, 8.5 x 11 in./144 pgs / 80 color 0 BW0 duotone 0 ~ Item D20257 ... Read more

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This little treasure documents Jasper Johns' Seasons cycle of four canvases originally shown at the Leo Castelli Gallery in 1986. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The cure for nostalgia
I started reading out of a mild curiosity about the man who wrote "Monstrous Regiment of Women".By the end I was fascinated and appalled...Ridley has a lot of respect for the reader's intelligence, and doesn't stint on the ghastly details that made some people (at last) revolt against theocracy in Elizabethan England.Tends to remind Americans just how much we are "missing" , the cure for nostalgia over those days. ... Read more

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Published to accompany an exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Jasper Johns to Jeff Koons presents contemporary art from the private collections of Eli and Edythe Broad, which are among the most important in the world. Featuring works by 22 significant artists, including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Cindy Sherman, this handsome volume addresses major movements such as American Neo-Dada and Pop, and German Neo-Expressionism, as well as art of the 1980s and current works from California.

An interview with the Broads and scholarly texts addressing important aspects of the collections situate the 160 full-color plates in art-historical context. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

''According to What and 'Watchman'
Published for an exhibition of the two paintings at the Gagosian Gallery in NY in 1992, the text, written by Francis M. Naumann, discusses in detail `According to What' and to a lesser degree `Watchman' including possible sources of imagery, structure and possible meanings. Very enjoyable with wonderful photographs especially those taken by Mark Lancaster, his studio assistant, of Johns working on 'According To What'.
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art, fresh insight into Johns' new paintings ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Yea sure...
The book makes some assertions about the artist's work that don't seem to fit the communications of the work. This would be useful as critical analysisopinion but in my opinion the book doesn't use enough direct information from the artist. ... Read more

Amazon.com Review
This little book has an essay at the front by Leo Castelli,the legendary New York art dealer who in the late 1950s snapped up theyoung Jasper Johns for his stable of new artists--nearly all of whombecame wildly successful. Most of the rest of the book is like asnapshot album, immersing the reader in pictures of Johns, his studio,his paintings, and historical artifacts. These last include the ArtNews magazine cover of 1958 that put Johns on the map. Speaking ofmaps, there are reproductions of Johns's famous U.S. maps, and also ofhis targets and the late double shadow, crosshatch paintings. In theback of the book, there is a brief chronology, plus captionsexplaining the preceding plates. It's a surprisingly good idea toplace them at the end--nicely non-intrusive.

Read Castelli's essayto get a sense of the renowned and perspicacious Leo Castelli, ratherthan for what it tells you about Johns. For that, there are hundredsof other sources. One startlingly thoughtful analysis of Johns's workappears in James Fenton's book Leonardo'sNephew. Castelli reveals that MoMA's Tom Hess had "a friend"buy one of Johns's early American flag paintings for the museum inorder to bypass a conservative acquisitions committee. Fenton tells usit was the architect Philip Johnson, and that it then took 15 yearsfor MoMA to wrest it from Johnson's appreciative grasp. --PeggyMoorman ... Read more

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Fred Orton offers the clearest and most penetrating picture yet of the enigmatic American painter, Jasper Johns.

"Fred Orton writes on Jasper Johns with clarity as well as conviction. . . . If Orton engages you with the play of words and concepts, he is equally adept at drawing you close into Johns’ paintings. . . . With equal authority, Orton analyzes the critical distinction, as articulated by Johns himself, between the actual and the figured."—Richard Shiff, ArtForum

"A significant contribution to the large body of literature about one of the more provocative and enigmatic artists of the mid- and late-20th-century."—Michael J. Prokopow, Boston Book Review

Fred Orton is Senior Lecturer in History of Art, University of Leeds, U.K.

Product Description
Focusing on the American, Jasper Johns (b 1930), who is associated with the Abstract Expressionist and Pop movements, this is one of a series of illustrated monographs which offer introductions to modern art and artists. Each book presents a profile of the artist and analysis of his distinctive style. Johns continually pushed back the boundaries of conventional expectations about art. The book presents more than 70 of his works (which include iconic images of targets and flags), from his sculptural reliefs and casts of the early 1950s to the assemblages of the 1960s and the paintings of recents years. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Colors a bit off, but good overall
As in all titles in the Great Modern Masters series published by Abrams: Colors are not vibrant, often with a brownish tint or/and too dark, and their accuracy is just O.K. There are 64 pages of a good size 9.5x12 inches (24x30.5 cm). It begins with an introduction with 5-6 small b&w pictures on 2 pages, which is followed by a biography with 5-6 small b&w pictures on 2 next pages. The rest is dedicated to good size over 60 full color plates divided into chapters dedicated to artist's carrier periods, style directions, or themes, each described by 12-16 lines of text. The series is inferior to the same size paperback series published by Taschen in 1990s, but superior to Taschen's series of smaller sizes published latter. Unfortunately, the Taschen series does not cover Bacon, Botero, Brancusi, Braque, Calder, de Chirico, Johns, Kokoschka, Leger, Man Ray, Malevich, Modigliani, and Rouault this series does. ... Read more