There is something sinister about an institution propping up irrelevant late period work, in order to keep their version of art history intact. This work is relevant only because the over educated and pompous curators said so. Let Johns die in peace and be remembered for his flags, body parts. and Ballantine can. This gray sludge should be nothing more than a footnote in a coffee table book.

Mostly awful work only on display at the MoMA because of who made it. Sorry you think that opinion is grotesque.

I don’t know what Gelber means by “the curator’s pre-packaged analysis.” Does that mean the curatorial choices? Does that mean the didactics’ description of the work? Does that mean the decision to mount this show at all? Obviously Johns agreed to it, so it would seem that he at least partially approves of what’s on display and what’s in the didactics (which I don’t think contained any allegations, despite Gelber’s repeated use of that word).

Yeah, he may be thinking about death, especially since the other two men connected to this photo (Bacon and Freud) are also dead. I definitely don’t think that anyone’s trying to “shore up his reputation,” which is a pretty cynical way to think about how someone works and a pretty grotesque accusation to throw at some prints you seem to like when considering their formal qualities.