GRAND RAPIDS, MICH.- The Grand Rapids Art Museum is presenting the first major exhibition of Jasper Johns prints in two decades, An Art of Changes: Jasper Johns Prints, 1960 – 2018. On view at the Museum from October 2 through January 8, 2022, the exhibition surveys six decades of Johns’ practice in printmaking through a selection of some 90 works in a wide range of techniques.
When Johns’ paintings of flags and targets debuted in 1958, they brought him instant acclaim and established him as a critical link between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. In the ensuing 60 years, he has continued to astonish viewers with the beauty and complexity of his paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints. His imagery has grown to include objects found in the studio, abstract patterns glimpsed in the environment, souvenirs from his childhood, and quotations from his own and others’ artworks.
“An Art of Changes invites guests to engage with one of the most inventive minds in 20th century art,” commented GRAM Director and CEO Dana Friis-Hansen. “I look forward to welcoming our members and guests to immerse themselves in the rich range of Jasper Johns’ beautiful, thought-provoking prints.”
Johns created his first print, a lithograph of a target, in 1960. Since then, he has reworked many of his paintings in print form, using strategies and techniques such as fragmenting, doubling, reversing, and varying scale or color. To date, he has created more than 350 prints in intaglio, lithography, wood and linoleum cut, screen printing, lead relief, and blind embossing.
“An Art of Changes is one of the most beautiful exhibitions I have seen at GRAM,” said GRAM Chief Curator Ron Platt. “Making prints was just as important to Johns as making paintings, and over his long career he mastered the full range of printmaking processes and materials. Johns is rightly known as a deep thinker, but this exhibition proves how much he also loved working with different materials and processes to create works that dazzle the eye.”
The exhibition follows Johns’ deep fascination with printmaking and is organized in four thematic sections: Signs & Systems, In the Studio, Surfaces, and Traces. Viewers will see examples of the artist’s recognizable flags, targets, and numerals as well as images that incorporate the tools, materials, and techniques of mark-making; abstract works derived from images of flagstones and hatch marks; and more recent works that teem with autobiographical and personal imagery. Throughout, we follow Johns’ creative process chronologically as he reconsiders and revises some of these key motifs over time.
