Jasper Johns – 0 through 9

Jasper Johns is a painter and printmaker who holds a foundational place in twentieth century art history. Quoting the evocative gestural brushstroke of the Abstract Expressionists, Johns represented common objects such as flags, targets, masks, maps and numbers: He sought to explore things "seen and not looked at, not examined" in pictorial form. Drawing from common commercial and 'readymade' objects, such as newspaper clippings, Ballantine Ale and Savarin Coffee cans, Johns was a bridge to Pop, Dada and Conceptual art movements.

Beyond the historical significance, each work by Johns is individually considered in sensuous form. A curiosity of medium led him to employ a range of materials from encaustic and commercial house paint to lithography, intaglio and lead relief.

0 through 9, printed in brown, is a forceful presence on the sheet. The drawing functions to enclose and compress. Hatching strokes, familiar in Johns' work since the four-panel Untitled painting of 1972, modulate interstices between marks that signify numerals. The place on the left border broken by the point of the 4 makes us momentarily more aware of that figure than the others. Areas of the handmade paper appear to flicker between strokes of ink, seemingly in response to or drawing our attention to - colored flecks of pulp in the warm, gray sheet: white, blue-gray, and a few faint brownish-pink spots, similar to the color of the inked numerals.

The splendid sheets of paper used for this edition was produced by printer Ron McPherson from rags, the source of their distinctive colors.

Medium: Lithograph in colors on La Paloma handmade paper
Date: 1977
Dimensions: 27.6 x 20.6cm
Sign: signed in pencil, dated ‘77’ and annotated ‘AP IX/XV’ (an artist's proof, aside from the edition of 60), with the blindstamp of the publisher/printer, Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles