JASPER JOHNS MIND/MIRROR

BY: Ines Valencia

Not one but two museums are housing the latest retrospective of the work of legendary American artist Jasper Johns. The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art simultaneously exhibit works from the artist’s entire career. The exhibition, titled Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror, opened on September 29 and runs through February 13, 2022.
 

Jasper Johns is one of the biggest names in the history of American art, especially in the Abstract Expressionist and Pop Art movements. He was born in 1930 in Augusta, GA, and entered the art scene in the 1950s. The work he created stood out from what everyone else was doing at the time. He is well known for experimenting with his depictions of flags, maps, and many different symbols and leading in the Minimalist movement. He briefly studied at the University of South Carolina before moving to New York in the 1950s, and the people he met in the city played a significant role in his decision to pursue art as a career. This group included other big names, such as composer John Cage, choreographer Merce Cunningham, and Robert Rauschenburg. He discovered the work of Marcel Duchamp during a trip to Pennsylvania, where he saw Duchamp’s “The Large Glass.” Johns became interested in the “readymades” that Duchamp is widely known for (found objects displayed as works of art). 
 

Johns created his first print in 1960 (a lithograph titled Target) and has since developed more than 400. As his work has been genuinely revolutionary throughout his entire career, he has been celebrated and criticized, especially when he first started. His early works seemed rather absurd to certain art critics, as what he was creating (simple flags, maps, numbers…) had never been seen before and did not make sense to many. Johns was known to choose popular symbols, or “symbols that the mind already knows,” to explore and analyze the relationship between an image and its link to color, texture, and display. His works are sold for some of the highest price tags, especially for a living artist. He is also seen as one of the most influential American painters of the twentieth century, with Rauschenberg, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko. He is also recognized as one of the greatest printmakers of all time.
 

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror features an outstanding amount of works, some of which are being shown publicly for the first time. The paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints help to explore the artist’s fascination with mirroring and doubles; and the two parts of the exhibition, which take place in two different museums, also act as reflections of one another, spotlighting themes, methods, and images that echo across the two venues. As stated by the organizers: “A visit to one museum or the other will provide a vivid chronological survey; a visit to both will offer an innovative and immersive exploration of the many phases, facets, and masterworks of Johns’s still-evolving career.” This retrospective’s two locations could not be more perfect, as New York City and Pennsylvania are two places where Johns learned a lot about himself and what he wanted to create.
 

This exhibition is co-organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The organizing curators are Carlos Basualdo, Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Scott Rothkopf, Senior Deputy Director and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, with Sarah B. Vogelman, exhibition assistant, in Philadelphia, and Lauren Young, curatorial assistant, in New York.