A rare interview with Jasper Johns (Pollock, day, painter, paintings)

[Cida]

I'm intrigued by his awful childhood.


Jasper Johns, American Legend
By M.H. Miller

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/t...per-johns.html

[turkeydance]

"Art is anything you can get away with.”

― Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

[Cida]

By the way here's an alternative link:

Jasper Johns, American Legend | My LifeStyle Max

It was a childhood of disappointment and rejection, of suffocating loneliness. “No one in my family, as far as I know, had ever traveled anywhere,” he said. “I don’t know that my mother had ever been out of the state until I was an adult.” He wanted to be “anywhere but there, at that time.”

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by Cida

By the way here's an alternative link:

Jasper Johns, American Legend | My LifeStyle Max

It was a childhood of disappointment and rejection, of suffocating loneliness. “No one in my family, as far as I know, had ever traveled anywhere,” he said. “I don’t know that my mother had ever been out of the state until I was an adult.” He wanted to be “anywhere but there, at that time.”

I first saw a picture of John's flag painting when I was in high school. Ever since then, I've always had the feeling Jasper Johns knows something I don't, and he's showing it to me with no secrets, but I can quite never grasp what it's saying.

Few others have been that tantalizing to me. Even now, he is as mysterious as ever, like a good sleight-of-hand magician.

[twinkletwinkle22]

Thanks for the interview link.
I like looking at Johns work although do not understand it intellectually.

[banjomike]

Using encaustic- melted wax- as a medium is really unusual these days. Encaustic is very ancient, but it's so hard to work with and control it became almost a lost art once other ways of painting in color were found.

It's use, along with John's more representative style while staying within the abstract expressionist movement of the 1950s and 60s, really sets his work apart.

Abstractionism became all about the surface of the painting and the gestures of the painter; there was very little deeper meaning for a viewer to interpret. Johns was able to capture his audience with both his surface as an abstractionist, and involve them with the psychological emotions they all have. We think about his flag paintings in a much different way than a painting by DeKooning or Pollock.

In many ways, the abstractionists were all one-trick ponies. Interesting, attractive, or appalling, but all on the surface.
Jasper's abilities run in much deeper depths than most of them with their ability to involve the mind of the viewer.