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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Disappearance and Negation

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Jasper Johns moved to New York in the summer of 1953, following his discharge from the army in his native South Carolina. An aspiring twenty-three-year-old artist, he arrived on a scene then dominated by the supposed heroism and soul-baring of Abstract Expressionism. But Johns soon fell in with a group of peers charting their own course, including the artist Robert Rauschenberg, with whom he began a romantic and creative relationship; the composer John Cage; and Cage’s partner, the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham. These connections exposed Johns to new ideas of chance and inspired an openness to everyday materials and actions. In the fall of 1954, as his friend Rachel Rosenthal remembered: “One day he destroyed everything, all the old work. It seemed as if his whole new conception was created in his mind.” For Johns, this was a declaration of independence from his own artistic past and from the leading styles of the day: “I decided to do only what I meant to do, and not what other people did.”

Johns shifted his work away from the then prevalent emphasis on an artist’s interior life and expression toward a cooler, more impersonal mode of painting. He embraced the deadpan depiction of common signs and objects, including flags, targets, and numbers, and explored gestures such as covering and hiding, often in pale grays or dense blacks. These acts of disappearance and negation can lend Johns’s art a somber and chilly air, full of loss, sadness, and even heartbreak.

The corresponding gallery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art focuses on the relationship between painting and everyday objects.

  • Blue and yellow target on a red background, with the sculpted lower halves of four faces above.

    Jasper Johns, Target with Four Faces, 1955. Encaustic and collage on canvas with objects, 29 3/4 × 26 in. (75.6 × 66 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Scull 8.1958. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph courtesy the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, New York

    Blue and yellow target on a red background, with the sculpted lower halves of four faces above.
  • Abstract rectangle of multicolored brushstrokes, set into the top half of an orange color field.

    Jasper Johns, Alley Oop, 1958. Oil and collage on cardboard mounted on fiberboard, 23 1/4 × 18 in. (59.1 × 45.7 cm). The Newhouse Collection. © 2021 Jasper Johns / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph © The Wildenstein Plattner Institute, New York, 2021

    Abstract rectangle of multicolored brushstrokes, set into the top half of an orange color field.
  • Brushy, gray-brown field with subtle embedded images, such as hand prints, footprints, and the word "DIVER"

    Jasper Johns, Diver, 1962–63. Charcoal, pastel, and paint on two sheets of paper mounted on two adjoined canvas supports, 86 1/8 × 71 1/4 in. (218.8 × 181 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York; partial gift of Kate Ganz and Tony Ganz in memory of their parents, Victor and Sally Ganz, and in memory of Kirk Varnedoe; Mrs. John Hay Whitney Bequest Fund; gift of Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., gift of Philip L. Goodwin, bequest of Richard S. Zeisler, and anonymous gift (all by exchange). Acquired by the Trustees of The Museum of Modern Art in memory of Kirk Varnedoe 377.2003.a-b. © 2021 Jasper Johns / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Jamie Stukenberg, Professional Graphics, Rockford, Illinois

    Brushy, gray-brown field with subtle embedded images, such as hand prints, footprints, and the word "DIVER"
  • Tin cup and wooden ruler on a background of gray brushstrokes.

    Jasper Johns, Good Time Charley, 1961. Encaustic on canvas with objects, 38 × 24 in. (96.5 × 61 cm). Private collection. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. The Art Institute of Chicago: photograph by Jamie Stukenberg, Professional Graphics, Rockford, Illinois

    Tin cup and wooden ruler on a background of gray brushstrokes.
  • Composition of thick, gray-green paint with visible textural brushstrokes and a scraped indentation in the top half of the composition.

    Jasper Johns, Painting Bitten by a Man, 1961. Encaustic on canvas, 9 1/2 × 6 7/8 in. (24.1 × 17.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York; gift of Jasper Johns in memory of Kirk Varnedoe, Chief Curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture, 1989–2001, 211.2007. © 2021 Jasper Johns / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. The Art Institute of Chicago: photograph by Jamie Stukenberg, Professional Graphics, Rockford, Illinois

    Composition of thick, gray-green paint with visible textural brushstrokes and a scraped indentation in the top half of the composition.
  • Square composition of gray brushstrokes, with the shape of a diamond, divided into four equal sections, subtly offset against the background.

    Jasper Johns, Disappearance II, 1961. Encaustic and collage on canvas, 40 × 40 in. (101.6 × 101.6 cm). Toyama Prefectural Museum of Art and Design, Japan. © 2021 Jasper Johns / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Taku Saiki, Tokyo

    Square composition of gray brushstrokes, with the shape of a diamond, divided into four equal sections, subtly offset against the background.

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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.

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

Three American flags on top of each other.

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 catalogue cover

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror book 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
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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