I don’t need to discuss the paintings – you should already know them. So I’m going to skip the you should see this one or that one type of thing. The show is devoted to the “first” ten years of image production by JJ – it is purposely edited and I think thats a wise decision. I will admit that it is not edited the way I would have edited the work – still the editing does give the show a real sense of start and finish as well as an invitation for looking for further work.
The four areas of this show (targets, device, skin, and naming) seem thin. This is where a different set of subjects could have been more interestingly shown to me anyway. What others are missing? maps, numbers and alphabets, pattern, monochrome (this would have been overarching) and lastly, process. If it were me, you would have seen: targets, device, maps, numbers and alphabets. I mention monochrome because it does indeed stretch across the whole body of JJ’s work. Naming does the same thing as monochromes – however to me it feels more like a tactical device versus a contextual device.
Despite my different thoughts about leit-motifs, within the show, it as a whole is quite the viewing, and well worth your time. (sidebar for a moment: how great is it that the NGA is free – I was able to go to the show and see this one show and get out, without having to feel like I had to see the whole museum – I love that about the museums in DC) The show is great until the last few rooms when it becomes the tightest hanging I’ve ever been a witness to at the NGA – literally at one point I needed to stand two feet away from one painting on a south wall to view the painting on the west wall. Maybe better planning could have been used. I must admit that the layout and flow were very similar to the Dada exhibit. Considering that JJ was at one time considered a “new dadaist” there is a certain humor in that.
One thing that is never said as much as I think it should be is the role/influence that Robert Rauschenberg clearly has on the first ten years of JJ’s work (and vice versa). this comes through loud and clear in all of the “Skin” images. These use RR’s technique of lighter fluid and burnisher to get images from other media. The images that were made around the time of “Souvenir” all owe a little bit to RR’s combines. I have always felt that the JJ/RR relationship (whatever it was) is really the post war art world version of Picasso and Braque.
That said it cant be much better in a museum to be standing in one room with almost all of the targets Johns ever painted in one room, curatorially that is one hell of a masterstroke.
Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting, runs through April 29.
