Poetry New York

Jasper Johns: Gray

To be sure: The majority of the works hung in this exhibition exist in color versions. In a desirable situation the curators at The Met wouldn’t be getting at anything specific by presenting only the gray canvases. Yet as one wonders through these few galleries of gray paintings it becomes clear we are not in that situation.

Viewing these works as a schematic to his color versions may actually prove the gray canvases more accessible; containing some kind of ‘raw information’ that the multi colored canvases simply hide or obscure. Without the stimuli of multiple colors, John’s main interest is closer at hand: an attempt to abandon the idea. In a given work, a space of grey (the whole) is divided up into smaller spaces of grey and so on until you have hundreds of divisions of gray. By dividing up a common image such as the American flag into smaller and smaller segments Johns is effectively getting rid the flag by way of division. The spectator is looking at something while simultaneously forgetting it. There isn’t new thought being applied to the flag but thought stripped away. This viewing experience resists a formal analysis or an ‘unpacking’ of the work by not offering new relations but suppressing the spectators current set of relations. An aggressive art? A passive art?

In this formulation, the main difference between his more famous color versions and these grey versions is not quite a rejection of color theory as it is a way to, “avoid all of the emotional and dramatic qualities of color,” as John’s himself as it.

The later work in this show moves away from known images. Using extra stretcher bars attached by hinges he hangs long pieces of string across the grey canvases. These show a direct approach to engaging space and because of the inherit lightness of string, movement. The free hanging low arc the string forms in front of the 90° angles of the canvas are a nice break from the monotony of gray and show (with perfect timing, at the end of the show) something or other.

Leaving the gallery one may experience nothing new. All of this is fine.

*Grey suits are hot this spring. Johns knows it, so do you.

                              -Corwin Peck