Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror

Sept 29, 2021–Feb 13, 2022

Jasper Johns’s groundbreaking work sent shock waves through the art world when it was first shown in the late 1950s, and he has continued to challenge new audiences—and himself—over a career spanning more than sixty-five years. He was born in 1930 in Augusta, Georgia; spent the majority of his adult life in New York; and today lives in Sharon, Connecticut, where, at the age of ninety-one, he remains active in his studio. Johns’s early use of common objects and motifs, language, and inventive materials and formats upended conventional notions of what an artwork is and can be. His profoundly generative practice helped spark movements including Pop art, Minimalism, and Conceptualism, among others, and has inspired successive generations of artists to this day.

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror is the most comprehensive retrospective ever devoted to Johns’s art. Featuring his most iconic works along with many others shown for the first time, it comprises a broad range of paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures from 1954 to today across two sites. Conceived as a whole but displayed in two distinct parts, the exhibition appears simultaneously here at the Whitney and at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, two institutions with which Johns has had long-standing relationships. This unique dual structure draws on the artist’s lifelong fascination with mirroring and doubles, so that each half of the exhibition echoes and reflects the other. Organized in largely chronological order, the retrospective presents pairs of related galleries—one in each city—that offer varied perspectives on the artist’s turns of mind. Individually, each gallery focuses on a particular aspect of Johns’s thought and work through the lens of different themes, processes, images, mediums, and even emotional states. Taken together, they provide an immersive exploration of the many phases, treasures, and mysteries of a radical, enduring, and still-evolving career.

This exhibition is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The organizing curators are Carlos Basualdo, Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Scott Rothkopf, Senior Deputy Director and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, with Sarah B. Vogelman, Exhibition Assistant, in Philadelphia, and Lauren Young, Curatorial Assistant, in New York.

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror is presented by

Leonard and Judy Lauder

Leadership support is provided by 

Kenneth C. Griffin 
Susan and John Hess  

Bank of America is the National Sponsor

 

In New York, this exhibition is sponsored by

Generous support is provided by Judy Hart Angelo; Neil G. Bluhm; Matthew Marks; and Kevin and Rosemary McNeely, Manitou Fund. 

Major support is provided by the Barbara Haskell American Fellows Legacy Fund; The Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston; Nancy and Steve Crown; Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz; Ellsworth Kelly Foundation and Jack Shear; Agnes Gund; Kristen and Alexander Klabin; Helen and Charles Schwab; the Whitney’s National Committee; and an anonymous donor.  

Significant support is provided by Constance R. Caplan, Marguerite Steed Hoffman and Tom Lentz, the Jon and Mary Shirley Foundation, Sueyun and Gene Locks, Susan and Larry Marx, Marsha and Jeffrey Perelman, Donna Perret Rosen and Benjamin M. Rosen, The Robert Lehman Foundation, and Stefan T. Edlis and H. Gael Neeson Foundation. 

Additional support is provided by Aaron and Leslee Cowen, Kathy and Richard Fuld, Johanna and Leslie Garfield, Ashley Leeds and Christopher Harland, Mrs. Ronnie F. Heyman, Sheila and Bill Lambert, Barbara and Richard Lane, Margo Leavin, Janie C. Lee, Richard and Nancy Lubin, Martin Z. Margulies, the National Endowment for the Arts, Monique and Gregg Seibert, Norman Selby and Melissa Vail Selby, and Gloria H. Spivak.


This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

The opening dinner is sponsored by Christie’s 


New York magazine is the exclusive media sponsor.

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Dreams

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After a decade spent primarily exploring abstract crosshatches, during the 1980s and 1990s Jasper Johns flooded his work with a profusion of perplexing new imagery, often in surreal combinations. Unlike his earlier use of found objects and common motifs, his new images derived from disparate art histories, popular sources, and his immediate surroundings and imagination. Some featured fragmented and distorted body parts, including the eyes from a 1936 painting by Picasso of his lover, which appear in many works throughout this room. Johns also frequently employed a mysterious craggy silhouette that he dubbed the Green Angel after the 1990 painting where it first appeared. He refused to identify the source of this image, as he had in his other tracings, so that its meaning remained open to the viewer’s interpretation.

For the first time in his painting, Johns rendered images and objects in space rather than imprinting or flatly transposing them edge-to-edge on a canvas. Perspectival illusion, along with shading, creates a newfound sense of depth and three-dimensionality. As in a dream, images pile up, float, drift, and dissolve in spaces that straddle the real and the fantastical. Pale palettes and luminous materials, such as watercolor and pastel, contribute to the ethereal atmosphere. If Johns’s earlier work invited analytical puzzling, his hybrid compositions from this time conjure a realm of irrational symbolic association, heightened emotion, and reverie.

The corresponding gallery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art focuses on darker, nightmarish visions.

  • Collage composition of drawings and paintings pinned to a white, paint-spattered background, with a painted mannequin forearm hanging in the upper middle of the composition, with brown panels in the foreground.
    Collage composition of drawings and paintings pinned to a white, paint-spattered background, with a painted mannequin forearm hanging in the upper middle of the composition, with brown panels in the foreground.

    Jasper Johns, In the Studio, 1982. Encaustic, crayon, and collage on canvas with objects, 72 × 48 in. (182.9 × 121.9 cm). Collection of the artist; on long-term loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1984. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph © The Wildenstein Plattner Institute, New York, 2021

  • Central bathtub faucet offset against a light blue marbled wall, with taped up paintings on the left and right sides of the composition.
    Central bathtub faucet offset against a light blue marbled wall, with taped up paintings on the left and right sides of the composition.

    Jasper Johns, The Bath, 1988. Encaustic on canvas, 48 1/4 × 60 1/4 in. (122.6 × 153 cm). Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; acquired with a contribution from the Friends of the Kunstmuseum Basel and the Museum of Contemporary Art, G 1988.21. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph © The Wildenstein Plattner Institute, New York, 2021

  • Tall rectangular composition of abstracted facial features—two eyes, a nose, lips—in the interior of a pink-gray picture frame. A sketch of a sailboat and sunrise is pinned centrally in the upper half of the composition, and the letters "MONTEZ" surmount the top side of the frame.
    Tall rectangular composition of abstracted facial features—two eyes, a nose, lips—in the interior of a pink-gray picture frame. A sketch of a sailboat and sunrise is pinned centrally in the upper half of the composition, and the letters "MONTEZ" surmount the top side of the frame.

    Jasper Johns, Montez Singing, 1989. Encaustic and sand on canvas, 75 × 50 in. (190.5 × 127 cm). Collection of Marguerite Steed Hoffman. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph courtesy the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, New York

  • Vertical rectangular composition of rectangular segments of green and blue, with an irregular, multicolored shape in the left half of the image.
    Vertical rectangular composition of rectangular segments of green and blue, with an irregular, multicolored shape in the left half of the image.

    Jasper Johns, Untitled, 1996. Watercolor and charcoal on paper, 37 × 30 in. (94 × 76.2 cm). Collection of the artist. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Jamie Stukenberg, Professional Graphics, Rockford, Illinois

  • Purple fabric pinned against a watery, blue-and-gray background, with stylized facial features—eyes, noses, lips—scattered throughout the composition.
    Purple fabric pinned against a watery, blue-and-gray background, with stylized facial features—eyes, noses, lips—scattered throughout the composition.

    Jasper Johns, Untitled, 1990. Watercolor and graphite pencil on paper, 31 × 22 1/2 in. (78.7 × 57.2 cm). Collection of the artist. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Jamie Stukenberg, Professional Graphics, Rockford, Illinois

  • Horizontal bands of red, yellow, and blue, with the color names stenciled in various arrangements and sizes in each corresponding band. A black-and-white hand stretches up the center of the image from the lower left, an orange semicircle is in the upper right corner, and there is a downward-pointing purple arrow on the lower right side of the composition.
    Horizontal bands of red, yellow, and blue, with the color names stenciled in various arrangements and sizes in each corresponding band. A black-and-white hand stretches up the center of the image from the lower left, an orange semicircle is in the upper right corner, and there is a downward-pointing purple arrow on the lower right side of the composition.

    Jasper Johns, Land’s End, 1982. Black ink and colored ink on plastic, 36 1/4 × 28 1/8 in. (92.1 × 71.4 cm). Collection of the artist. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph courtesy the Menil Collection, Houston

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Essay

A young man sitting on the edge of a desk, looking at the viewer with a neutral expression, and holding a glass, against a backdrop of a painting on the wall and a collection of liquor bottles.

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror

By Scott Rothkopf, Senior Deputy Director and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator

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Audio guides

Three American flags on top of each other.
Three American flags on top of each other.

Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 1958. Encaustic on canvas (three panels), 30 7/8 × 45 3/4 in. (78.4 × 116.2 cm) overall. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Gilman Foundation, Inc., The Lauder Foundation, A. Alfred Taubman, Laura-Lee Whittier Woods, Howard Lipman, and Ed Downe in honor of the Museum’s 50th Anniversary 80.32. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Hear from artists, curators, and scholars on selected works from the exhibition.

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Exhibition Catalogue

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror book cover
Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror book cover

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror catalogue cover

Jasper Johns (b. 1930) is arguably the most influential artist living today. Over the past sixty-five years, he has produced a radical and varied body of work marked by constant reinvention. Inspired by the artist’s long-standing fascination with mirroring and doubles, this book provides an original and exciting perspective on Johns’s work and its continued relevance.

A diverse group of curators, academics, artists, and writers offer a series of essays—including many paired texts—that consider aspects of the artist’s work, such as recurring motifs, explorations of place, and use of a wide array of media. These include Carroll Dunham on dreams, Ruth Fine on monotypes and working proofs, Michio Hayashi on Japan, Terrance Hayes on flags, and Colm Toíbín on nightmares, among many others. The various themes are further explored in a series of in-depth plate sections that combine prints, drawings, paintings, and sculptures to draw new connections in Johns’s vast output.

Accompanying “mirroring” exhibitions held simultaneously at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this lavishly illustrated volume features a selection of rarely published works along with never-before-published archival content and is full of revelations that allow us to engage with and understand the artist’s rich and varied body of work in new and meaningful ways.

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Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection

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In the News

“The structure of the exhibition will open a window onto the beauty, meaning, and remarkable artistic order that organizes Johns’s work.” —ArtfixDaily

“The artist’s work has managed to speak both to and for the country’s consciousness for the last 60 years—and he’s not done yet.” —T Magazine

"[A]n absolute must-see"—Vogue

"It’s a broad and restless confrontation of the work of one of the country’s best-known artists . . . ."  —Boston Globe

"This is the first genuine, must-see blockbuster exhibition to open since the pandemic began in 2019, and it might be an occasion for euphoria.” —Washington Post

"It’s a testimony to [Johns's] long, productive career that Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror needs two museums . . . ." —Wall Street Journal

". . . a spectacular exhibition, spanning the artist's 65-year career and featuring many of his most iconic works as well as rare pieces on public view here for the first time."—Gothamist

"Mind/Mirror is a much-needed close-read, experimental new geography of this artist . . ."—New York Magazine

". . . a monumental retrospective [. . .] reveals an artist’s protean talent, changing perspectives and resiliency over six decades."—New York Times

On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

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