Johns extended the concept of duality beyond his canvas frames. ”Painted Bronze” (1960) presents two seemingly identical but subtly different representations of Ballantine Ale cans, reflecting Jasper Johns’ interest in duplication and mirroring. Nearby is John’s painting of two American flags, one stacked on top of the other, together comprising a single work. They seem to be identical, but on closer inspection one is hollow, having been opened with a beer can punch, the other is solid bronze with an unopened top. “Ale Cans” (1964) at the PMA, for example, is a painted bronze sculpture of two cans of Ballantine beer. You also see works in which they’re very structured, a duplicate of a certain image twice.” “You see many works that are versions of an earlier work with slight variations and in different mediums. “There’s a whole variety of ways in which Jasper uses mirroring and duplication and repetition in the work,” said Basualdo. He has regularly used doubles and variations in his work, across multiple canvases. The concept of mirroring the two exhibitions evokes Johns’ work. The “Nightmares” room in Philadelphia filled with dark paintings associated with anxious emotions - some likely made in response to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s - corresponds with a brighter “Dreams” room at the Whitney. WHYY thanks our sponsors - become a WHYY sponsorĪ Philadelphia room about John’s fascination with and collaborations in Japan is thematically tied to a New York room about John’s relationship with South Carolina, where he grew up. So, a PMA gallery full of John’s paintings of numbers, a motif he worked many times over decades, mirrors a room at the Whitney filled with work featuring other motifs Johns worked over and over again: maps and targets. The Whitney also has 10 rooms, each corresponding with themes in the Philadelphia rooms.Ĭurators Carlos Basualdo (left) of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Scott Rothkopf of the Whitney Museum of American Art, lead a tour through the ”Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” exhibit. The PMA’s show is set up in a series of 10 rooms, each describing an aspect of John’s work. Each exhibition at the two museums was put together as a unique curatorial vision, while intentionally mirroring one another. “Can we do a show that, by its very structure, tells you something about the way in which Jasper Johns thinks about his work?” “The show is large and one could focus on the complexity that it took it to put together, but the basic idea is very simple,” said PMA curator Carlos Basualdo. Visitors who attend the exhibition at one venue will get half-price admission to the other. The co-curators say the structure of the collaborative show mimics Jasper’s lifelong body of work.Ī lifetime retrospective of the work of Jasper Johns, organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, is being presented simultaneously at both institutions. 13, features about 500 works spread across both the PMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, each exhibition mirroring the other. So it may not seem unusual that the first thing visitors encounter at the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of his work, is somebody else’s voice. The work itself is meant to stand on its own. A towering figure of 20th century American art, Johns has always been a quiet artist, hesitant to talk about his work and rarely offering anything like an explanation of what he has been steadily making for seven decades.
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