Numbers
Jasper Johns American
Printer Donn Steward American
Published by Universal Limited Art Editions American
Not on view
Since the mid-1950s, Johns has focused on everyday icons and emblems, or what the artist famously referred to as "things the mind already knows." A key motif has been numbers, which address modes of perception and knowledge. While numbers are depicted both individually and in serial formation, here, Johns layered them on top of one another, resulting in an image so tangled and intertwined as to appear nearly abstract. Without a function, the numbers become pure image. They are elegant and impersonal, as if stenciled, thus signaling an absence of the artist’s touch and creating associations with the official information-granting capacity in which numbers are frequently employed. This is among the many works by Johns that Florence and Joseph Singer donated to the Museum.
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