FRAGMENTS ACCORDING TO JOHNS, AN INTERVIEW WITH JASPER JOHNS

Author(s): John Coplans and JASPER JOHNS

Source: The Print Collector's Newsletter, Vol. 3, No. 2 (May-June, 1972), pp. 29-32
Published by: Art in Print Review
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44129350
Accessed: 13-02-2019 02:33 UTC

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 But leťs suppose, for argument's sake, expertise can be twisted to "validate" times are ahead, because editions of
that we artists agreed to adhere strictly to junk. What pyrotechnical linguistics it prints are growing smaller as artists
the Print Council definition (which is the would have taken to pursue those edi- attempt more and more difficult images
best one I know). Would you collectors, tions through the courts! Yet how simple that take more and more time to create
critics, curators, dealers agree to buy only to look at the prints themselves, feel the and pull. Hopefully, the public will come
those prints that fit the definitions? What misery of the images suffocating in a to know that the reason for making a
about your "right" to curatorial opinion, prison of inept processing, place the ugly print - from the artist's point of view -
critical judgment, access to mavericks and paper in the sun and watch the colors is that it is the medium of choice for
innovators? Can you be free if artists fade. Eyes, sensibility, common sense, certain kinds of images. I would make a
aren't? knowledge, experience are the best pro- lithograph even though only one impres-
It seems to me that much of the tection against a fake, and my definitionsion could be pulled: the work of art is
impulse to define the original print arises
of a fake is anything that pretends to bethe raison d'etre, and the edition is
from the desire to protect print-buyers something it asisn't. merely a secondary benefit. Unless one
consumers - to perform a sort ofNo one demands a definition of an
policing understands this about the printmaking
service. But isn't there more protection original painting.
in On the face of it, it arts, no definition will put to rest the
disclosure about each work of art than seems a silly idea. But paintings share the nagging possibility that a print was made
in generic definitions, no matter how same semantic issues and questions of as merchandise, not art. And having said
ingenious? Many years ago, when the procedure as do the prin tma king arts -that, is there not the same suspicion
European print-publishers were crankingthat is, the same issues except one: that about other media as well? In every case
out fakes by the thousands, I instituted a the print can exist in editions. There's the such doubts must be tested anew, not just
policy of providing detailed documenta- rub. But is it so difficult to understand by definitions of media, but by the more
tion of lithographs created at Tamarind, athat in a set of look-alike triplets,profound all criteria by which one identifies
practice that has become a norm in the three are original? art of any kind.
print market. I think the public has the I have noticed that the smaller the
right to know about edition size, collabo-edition, the easier it is for the public to
June Wayne, artist and printmaker, lives in Los
rating craftspersons and much other tech-accept a print's "originality." So, easier
Angeles.
nical data if they want it. Yet I have no
illusion that documentation prevents mis-
use of documentation. A document is
only as good as the person who signs it.
No one knows as much about real FRAGMENTS
money ACCORDING TO JOHNS, AN INTERVIEW
as counterfeiters, and the patoisWITH
of print
JASPER JOHNS
connaissance is never more fluent than
by John Coplans
among pushers of worthless printed pic-
In the following interview , Jasper Johns Well, actually I couldn't have done it
tures. One only has to read the Karshan
discusses his lithographic series Fragment-because in the original painting they are
text that accompanied Art in America's
According to What, made at Gemini
"original lithographs in limited editions fake. I can tell you what happened: I had
of 60,000" to see how the languageG.E.L.
ofin 1971. The interview took place aluminum letters cast for the painting -
in Los Angeles in 1971. red, yellow, blue - and it was my inten-
tion to bend all the letters of the word
I understand
Anton Heyboer, Red and White, color etching the six handprinted litho-
blue. I took them out on the terrace and
(18-15/16x11-11/16 in.), c. 1958-59. Anton
graphs are fragments from the painting
began hammering at them, and I couldn't
Heyboer etches and prints his own plates. In to What (1964). If I remember
According make them bend because they were too
small editions, his prints are seldom uniform,
correctly , the painting consists of several
thick and resistant. So I had to send them
but his negligent technical skills contribute to
linked panels. How many are there?
each print's success. Courtesy Museum of Mod- back to the man that made them, who
ern Art, Celeste and Armand Bartos Founda- also couldn't bend them. He had to saw
Six, I believe - either five or six.
tion Fund. into them, then bend them and fill in the
So each print relates to one of the panels
joints with solder, so the letters are not
of the painting? literal, they suggest something they are
No, not really, because Hinged Canvas not. All of the letters - red, yellow, and
and Leg and Chair relate to the same blue - are painted backwards as a mirror
panel. Bent "Blue" is from the lower part image; then between the painted image
is a hinge carrying the three-dimensional
of the lettering. Bent Stencil is from thebent letters.
lower part of the center of the painting.
Coathanger and Spoon is from the lowerYou've used the words red , yellow , blue a
right side of the painting. Bent "U" is just
lot in your paintings.
an element of Bent "Blue. "
I've used all the primary and secondary
How did you transfer these images from colors as words.
the paintings to the prints?
What are the elements of Bent Stencil in
I used photographs. The leg, the bent the actual painting?
stencil, the letters, and the coathanger all
derive from photographs I had specially They are just circles in squares. The
squares are treated as value, a kind of
made. A lot of the perspective of things
progression from white to black; the
in the drawing of the prints is derived
colors are a spectrum progression - yel-
from photographs, so in certain situations
I thought it easier to use the actual low to orange, then it skips. To explain
photograph than to avoid it.
that: yellow, green, blue, violet, red,
orange are right out of the spectrum, but
You did say the complexity of the letters
adding and subtracting - yellow plus blue
"blue" would have been a horrible task to equals green; minus yellow equals blue;
render in drawing? plus red equals violet; minus blue equals
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Jasper Johns, Leg and Chair , lithograph (35x30
in.), 1971. Courtesy Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles.
red; plus yellow equals orange; plus black
equals brown; minus orange equals black;
plus white equals gray; minus black
equals white. The only place where there
is any disturbance in the order is with the
brown, which always seems to me to be
separate color. Then the value scale went
from white through gray to black, and
then from dark to light again by adding
violet.
The prints refer to . . . ?
The piece of metal attached to the paint-
ing is the template I used to paint all the
circles; when I got to the bottom I bent it
and attached it to the lower part of the
painting.
The drawing in Coathanger and Spoon is According to What, face to the painting
quite different from the painting. and signed on the back. I presume the
print is of the image concealed on the
It is as though the coathanger was posi-
inner face of the hinged canvas. Does the
tioned flat against the surface, traced
Hinged Canvas lithograph correspond
onto the canvas and then bent away. So
pretty much to the original image?
the gray represents the tracing of the
coathanger before it was bent, and the Yes, fairly exactly. In the painting the
black is the coathanger bent backwards. canvas is hinged and drops to the floor.
The print simultaneously shows the
The spoon is on a piece of wire attached
to the canvas?
hinged canvas closed and open. On the
face of the canvas is the shadow of
No, it's on a piece of wire attached toDuchamp.
the
coathanger, but loose, swinging in the air.
But in the original painting everything is
What about Leg and Chair? flat - there is no illusion of perspective.
The first time I used this kind of element Yes, but in the print I just made the
was in Japan, in a painting called Watch-
image symmetrical, so the top is the same
man (1964), in which I did a section ofbottom.
as the
figure seated in a chair. It was used And
withthe reference to Duchamp?
the realistic or imitative surface shown
forward. After I finished the painting, DuchampI did a work which was a torn
invited various people to come andsquare look(I think it's called something like
at it. My Japanese friends all went up Myself Torn to Pieces). I took a tracing of
against the painting to look behind to seethe profile, hung it by a string and cast its
how it was made. So when I made this shadow so it became distorted and no
painting, which I already had in longer
mind, square.
I I used that image in the
turned it the other way to show painting.
the backThere is in Duchamp a reference
to of
of the cast, as it were, or the inside a hinged
the picture, which of course is
a rather than the outside.
cast what this canvas is. Beyond that I don't
know what to say because I work more or
Where does the title According to What
less intuitively.
come
a from? And the black splattered blob to the side
I made it up. Recently I found something of the Duchamp profile with the trickle
on this wording. I think the note appear- coming down?
ing in my sketchbook goes like "some-
I sprayed that with a spray gun.
where there is the question of seeing
clearly , seeing what , according to what But
" does that have a particular reference?
And that's where the title came from.
The painting was made up of different
The hinged canvas is at the bottom of ways of doing things, different ways of

Jasper Johns, According to What , oil on canvas with objects (88x192 in.), 1964. Courtesy Collection of Edwin Janss, Jr., Thousand O
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 The shadows change according to what
happens around the painting. Everything
changes according to that. Everything
changes according to something, and I
tried to make a situation that allows
things to change.
Back to the prints. Did you try any other
aspects of the painting and not use them ?
No, I didn't. What I did was to take those
things which are elements and are more
or less lost in the painting, and made
these details the subject of the painting.
You dropped the use of the wide range of
Jasper Johns, Bent "Blue", lithograph (25-1 /2x color as used in the painting.
28-3/4 in.), 1971. Courtesy Gemini G.E.L., Los
Angeles, California. The prints are all in various cold and
warm grays.
applying paint, so the language becomes
What is the portion of a comic on the top
somewhat unclear. If you do everything
right-hand corner of Bent "Blue"?
from one position, with consistency, then
Jasper Johns, Coathanger and Spoon, litho-
everything can be referred to that. You In the print each image is different - graph
that (34x25-1/4 in.), 1971. Courtesy Gemini
understand the deviation from the point area is a monotype. G.E.L., Los Angeles.
to which everything refers. But if you
Of the sixty -six numbered prints in the
don't have a point to which these things edition , each is different ?
refer, then you get a different situation,
which is unclear. That was my idea. Yes, each is a different fragment of news-
print - comics, want ads, sports, all kinds
In the original painting you applied paint of things.
by brush. Are there so many different
ways of apply ing pain t ? One would never deduce that from a
single print.
It's applied through a stencil, it's applied
with the idea of an image of Marcel, it's You would never deduce it from looking
applied with air - with spray. I think this at one print because you tend to think
is also the first painting that I let drips go that the prints are all the same.
sideways - I turned the painting to let Are any of the other prints different in
this happen. It has squares and circles of this way ?
paint, is shaded and unpainted and all
that kind of thing. I tried to involve theNo, only Bent "Blue. 99
paint in the area of thought that moves And all the prints employ the same range
from representation to material or dimen- of color?
sional objects, and tried to make them all
equal, more or less. Yes, except in the newsprint in Bent
"Blue,99 which is a direct transfer from the
Were the shadows ever a concern to you?
newspaper.
Jasper Johns, Bent "U", lithographs (25x20
What is the multicolored arrowed line on
in.), 1971. Courtesy Gemini G.E.L., Los
Bent "U"?
Angeles.
Just to indicate the line at which the
letters are bent.

It also repeats the colors red , yellow , and

blue as used in the lettering on the paint-
ing. I notice the double arrowed line
across Coathanger and Spoon also repeats
the colors.

In both situations it represents a line

which is turned back. The words "hinge"
are also in spectrum colors. I use the
spectrum colors at every point where a
part has the ability to turn in a different
way.

Why did you cross out your signature on

Hinged Canvas with blue lines?

Well, I didn't cross it out. The cross was

there before I signed it, but I planned to
sign it that way. I have deliberately taken
Jasper Johns, Bent Stencil, lithograph (27-1 /2xDuchamp's own work and slightly changed
20 in.), 1971. Courtesy Gemini G.E.L., Los it, and thought to make a kind of play on Jasper Johns , Hinged Canvas, lithograph (36x30
Angeles. whose work it is, whether mine or his. in.), 1971. Courtesy Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles.
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Why did you cross out the printed matter in purple , Leg and Chair in blue , Coat-ber: Sixty-two publishers presented 1,100
in Bent "Blue" in the same way? hanger and Spoon in green. Do you haveeditions by some 450 artists. This year
any general remarks on the prints - the Berliner Kunstmarkt, an art fair held
In a sense to say it is of no importance,
because in Bent "Blue," that area is con- something that came to mind as you were each May, focuses exclusively on graphics
making the lithographs? and multiples. Divers publications also
stantly changing, so it's not too impor-
report new graphics on the market.
tant what's there. But obviously it's of Without exception, the prints are highly
Among these are the weekly newspaper
great importance what's there, because representational. In every case, objects
that is what is there. But it could be are represented, so they are very conven-
Die Zelt1 that presents a selection,
"Graphics of the Week," in each issue;
anything else - that or the nexttional image. illustrations. But in making what is
Katalog der Editions-Auslieferung Ha. Jo.
a detail in the painting - and is often lost
Apart from color , did you use as great a Müller ,2 a wholesale graphics catalogue
- the subject of each print, I made it
variety of techniques in the lithographs as that is constantly updated, with illustra-
more obvious, I think. What I did then
in the paintings? tions and minute descriptions of each
was to print them in such a way that the
edition; and the quarterly Magazin
No, what I did in the prints was suggestion
to get ridof other things happening
Kunst 3 that aims at a complete listing of
of color and replace it with a gray occurred.
field One
- of the ways I chose to do
all prints, multiples, and illustrated books
gray, gray-violet and that kind this of is not to center the printing on the
thing.
published in the previous three months,
Where I've used color, like red, paper. yellow, Only the subject is centered, so the
with all details important to collectors,
and blue, the colorful elements printing generally runs off the paper without mar-
including price.
would be those normally without gins. color -
In every case they bleed, and this
as an indication they are directions, suggests forthey are fragments of something Once initiated, an American collector
instance, to bend something. else. might set out to encounter the German
print scene. Let Munich be the first stop.
Some of the prints are also signed in Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer, well known to
different colors. Hinged Canvas is signedJohn Coplans is Editor of Artforum. Americans as the auction house for Ger-
man Expressionism, is also quite active as
a print publisher. In 1971, they presented
THE GERMAN PRINT MARKET the seventh volume of their series Euro-
päische Graphik , devoted to the work of
by Heidi & Claus Colsman-Freyberger seven young British artists, among them
Hockney, Jones, and Procktor. Ketterer is
also one of the very few dealers to offer
prints made in East Germany. His cata-
logue #65, Herman Naumann , is a good
example. Galerie van de Loo, housed in
the same building, the historic Stuckvilla,
concentrates on young German print-
makers. In addition, it published the
poster series for the 1972 Olympics, a
rather pretentious series that has been
well advertised and distributed in the
United States. An equally daring adven-
ture is Edition München International. Its
director, Dorothea Leonhart, was the
first to offer an edition of 10,000, each
impression of Friedrich Hundertwasser's
Good Morning City , signed and num-
bered. Originally $28, it now sells for
fifteen times that price. Other prints fol-
lowed - by Peter Phillips, Richard Hamil-
ton, and Eduardo Paolozzi - with edi-
tions usually limited to 3,000. More are
to come. Besides such established print-
Dieter Rot, München , color screenprint (28-3/4x40-1/8 in.), 1971. Courtesy publishers
Ronald as dealers
FeldmanThomas
Fine and Buch-
Arts, New York. holz, there are a remarkable number of
Germany's graphic heritage is well Germany,
repre-with a market value of newcomers. Of these, Edition Jörg Schell-
mann and Galerie Franzius stand out. The
sented in American collections, both 36,099,300 DM ($11,200,000).
latter is affiliated with Werkstatt Edition
public and private, and in dealer inven-Presented with such impressive figures,
tories. Prominent examples - Schon- the American collector might want to Kroll, a screenprint workshop specializing
gauer, Dürer, Cranach, Altdorfer - date know more. Where can introductory ma-in computer graphics.
as early as the 15th century. Woodcuts terial on the German print market be Next on the itinerary is Cologne, fast
and engravings by German Expressionists, found? How does the German collector becoming Germany's most active art
such as Beckmann, Schmidt-Rottluff, keep informed? scene. Just one building, the new Gallery
Nolde, Kirchner, and Heckel, are as Exhibitions help. In the summer House,
of Lindenstrasse 18-22, houses five
esteemed and sought after in the United 1971, for example, two exhibitions publishers: Friedrich, Müller, Neuendorf,
States as they are in Germany. Yet little showed a cross-section of printmaking in
Thelen, and Wilbrand. Graphics are but
is known of contemporary German Germany. The May /June exhibition in one part of their programs. The Orangerie
prints. Examples in the United States are Cologne, Internationale Graphik aus Verlag, however, deals exclusively in its
limited, though the supply is anything deutschen Editionen , presented the own editions of prints and multiples.
but. During the past year, 1,184 separate recent output of twelve German pub- Prints at Galerie Zwirner, as at many
editions - a total of 126,363 impressions lishers. The second, entitled Libori, was galleries, are more or less limited to an
- plus 87 portfolios were published in held in Paderborn from July to Septem- occasional graphic by artists of its own
32

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