Stencil, Map, Body, Double:
Jasper Johns in Action

Online, via Zoom

All members

“Take an object / Do something to it / Do something else to it,” wrote Jasper Johns in 1964. On the occasion of the major retrospective, Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror, members are invited to this special talk, led by teaching fellow Grant Johnson, which frames works by Jasper Johns within a wider constellation of contemporary art and artists. Join us as we take a look at some of Johns’s most iconic works alongside works by artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Ai Weiwei.

By asking what they ‘do,’ we consider the exhibition as a showcase for a suite of actions, equally available to Johns and others. By identifying key actions that recur across Johns’s career—including stenciling, mapping, embodying, and doubling—we see how they also shape the work of several peers, revealing shared investments and moves at play across a greater field of contemporary art. By tracing these pursuits, we see Johns as part of a dynamic web of artistic activity, a series of actions that may never cease.

Option 1: Thursday, September 9
6:30 pm

Option 2: Saturday, September 18
1:30 pm

Option 3: Thursday, October 7
6:30 pm

Grant Johnson is a Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow at the Whitney and recently completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Art History at the University of Southern California. His dissertation, “Sheila Hicks: Weaving to the World,” traces the first critical history of the prolific American artist and weaver. An active curator, critic, and writer, he has published work in Artforum, Frieze, The Brooklyn Rail, and Garage.