Jasper Johns

JASPER JOHNS (Augusta, Georgia, 1930).
"Sketch," 1974.
Lithograph. Exemplar 15/50.
Hand signed and numbered.
Work cataloged in The Prints of Jasper Johns 1960-1993, Richard S. Field, 1994, p. 130.
Measurements: 107 × 66 cm; 127 × 90.5 cm (frame).

"Sketch" reflects one of Johns' central interests: the relationship between image, language, and representation. The cartographically inspired composition presents a grid of lines and shapes cut out against a mottled background, in which words alluding to different parts of the body -buttocks, knee, torso, leg, feet, face- appear, integrated as visual signs within the image. The words function not only as descriptive elements, but also as graphic fragments that question the distance between the named object and its representation. Through an apparently schematic structure, the artist builds a composition of great conceptual richness, where the human body appears decomposed, codified and converted into a system of signs.

As usual in Johns, the work combines formal clarity and semantic ambiguity, placing itself in an intermediate territory between the map, the diagram, the anatomical drawing and the poetic image.

Jasper Johns is a key figure in contemporary American art and one of the main renovators of post-war artistic language. His work, initially associated with neo-Dadaism and pop art, introduced everyday motifs such as flags, targets, numbers, letters and maps, transforming them into images of profound reflection on perception, symbol and the act of representation.

He has exhibited in institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. His work is part of major international collections, including MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, the Tate, the Centre Pompidou and the Art Institute of Chicago.