As the room unfolds before a viewer’s eyes there is a veritable procession of numbers going from one to nine through all the gyrations of being outlined, filled in or partially obscured. It is as though the sequence of this set of well-known forms is taken through every possible permutation. That is followed by a similar parade of images in which the letters of the alphabet are taken through their combinations including forays into brightly colored versions. The negative space surrounding the letter predominates in some while the letterforms emerge in others. Then comes a series of objects which are so prosaic and commonplace to be taken entirely for granted. There are American flags, maps, the reverse side of stretched canvases and pens and pencils. They are reincarnated multiple times as image and as object and every time their obdurate everyday origins seem to be contradicted by the painstaking construction the artist has put into visualizing them.
Jasper Johns, Fool’s House, 1961–62 (Private collection) © Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Jasper Johns has a long history of confounding any critical reads of this work. His silence and repetition have led others to write extraordinarily long essays on what the artist intended. All the while it’s hard to discern how important these elucidations are to the artist. The exhibition “Mind/Mirror”—part one of a two-part exhibition divided between Philadelphia and New York—crisscrosses through the artist’s work and traces the chronology from its origins in what was then known as pop art to the most recent figurative elaborations. As with any artist’s long career, there are artworks that stand out for their amazing qualities and works that simply signal that the artist has continued working albeit with less successful outcomes.
Jasper Johns, 5 Postcards, 2011. (Philadelphia Museum of Art: Promised gift of Keith L. and Katherine Sachs) © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Johns knowingly entices the viewer into a world not only of things that are recognizable in terms of their relationship to the outside world but recognizable within his overall output. His play with space and form and color has got a kind of predictability that is often unsettling in its obviousness. Whether or not the artist intended for this to be the result of the reflections of mind in the mirror, the viewer is taken on a whimsical and rather significant journey.
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Through February 13, 2022
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