Comments on: Jasper Johns: Drawings 1997–2007 at Matthew Marks Gallery

By: David Cohen

David Cohen — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:43:37 +0000

In reply to Sharon. Degas’s dictum applies to criticism as well. Reciting how an artist fits into canonical art history is seeing what you are supposed to see; letting the world know what the work is actually like is a revisionist gesture. The review you are taking issue with looked at work of the last decade; your defense of the artist is a recital of art historical truisms based on his initial reception. In criticism, research consists of looking at the work, not reading up the reputation.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 11:21:52 +0000

Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg were pivotal artists between the styles of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. To say Jasper Johns is awkward, ungenerous, compromised, dreary, dull is patronising and untrue. He took the banal everyday object and made the audience see it in a new fresh way. His richly textured layered surfaces are engaging and moved beyond emotion as displayed in the works of Jackson Pollock. Johns and Rauschenberg challenged painterly conventions and in the words of Edgar Degas ‘The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he has to make others see’. Jasper Johns’ innovative approach influenced Modern and Postmodern practices and you need to do some research before making generalized statements about such a significant artist.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 02:54:24 +0000

Good god what did Jasper johns ever do to you? He makes great paintings, while you recycle critical cliches. But you have the nerve to call him awkward, ungenerous, compromised, dreary, dull. I hope you realize that this article reads like you hate Jasper Johns’s work.