Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns concentrates the whole variety of life, objects and art into a few central motifs, which he selects subjectively. Their integration into an expression of the conditions of perception is a matter of his own, personal. Just as Johns sees procedure and statement as equals, his paintings allow the parts and the whole to be perceived as equal in value. The painterly structure, composition and colors combine to make of the original objects a unity which precludes hierarchical divisions and gives equal weight not only to the parts in relation to one another, but also to each part in relation to the whole. In his sketchbooks he writes: "Whether to see two parts as one thing or as tow things." And in deciding how to apportion the space within a canvas, he sees two "things" and the space between them as three "things."

The absence of interpretation, whether in the painting or the object, and the anonymity of the pictures and their style, are a result of the withdrawal of the artist's personality, and show that the act of perceiving a picture or depicted object is a variable process. In one text Johns quotes his friend John Cage: "At every point in nature there is something to see. My work contains similar possibilities for the changing focus of the eye." His non - representational symbols draw the strands of the picture together into what appears to be an indissoluble and (usually) finely - woven mesh, from whose abstract structure the object to be distilled. The flag may shine out in reds and blues, or it may be abstracted into white - ish tones, into the material disintegration of a bronze - as if receding into nothingness. In his drawings, the structure of the flag is minimized. One is reminded of Impressionist brushwork, that is of a kind of painting which went out to discover the actual mechanisms of perception, the natural tensions and movements of the human eye.

Jasper Johns' work does not pander to expectations created by the media. He sees the media as a strategy for the decoding of different layers of thought and vision. Which is the object, and which the picture? How does one depict the weight of a beer can behind its painted façade? How does one go about giving two beer cans "individual" identity while giving them identical form and making them equally beautiful?

What are Jasper Johns' techniques?