The Met and More

We went to the Met today. I would've liked to spend more time there. I didn't even get a chance to see their modern collection. I did, however, get to see my first impasto Van Gogh, Sunflowers, done in 1887 (of which I've posted, at right, a lousy photo I found on the net) that was not behind glass! AND I even saw Wheat Field with Cypress Trees! One of my faves. And his portraits are always really impressive as well. 

They have a few special exhibits, including a Lee Friedlander exhibit (pics taken in Olmstead Park, I wasn't terribly impressed -- although, viewed together, these photos definitely do create a comprehensive portrait of the park) and the Jasper Johns: Gray exhibit. 

In terms of Jasper Johns, the painting I was most drawn to was Tennyson. Maybe this is due to my soft spot for poetry. Jasper Johns’ painting Tennyson of 1965 references the Victorian poet Alfred Lord Tennyson; “Tennyson” appears at the base of the painting in all caps. The painting was created with encaustic – which is hot wax mixed with pigment (an ancient technique first used by the Roman Egyptians). The painting is done entirely in greys, besides a few select splatters of primary colors at the bottom of the piece where an unpainted, exposed piece of canvas lies.

 

Many of Johns’ paintings in his grey series exist with a strip of unpainted canvas at the bottom. A number of these paintings utilize stencils, and symbols, preexisting signifiers. He uses

something recognizable, the name of a famous 19^th century poet, to signify a mood in Tennyson. Tennyson suffered from depression, and his poems often comment on death, like “In Memoriam,” or “Charge of the Light Brigade.” And the painting itself looks as though it is Johns' gravestone for Tennyson. (Both the palette and the nature of the lettering suggest this.) I think Johns' fascination with symbolism was largely influenced by the ideas of the 20^th c. psychoanalyst, Lacan, whose ideas, along with a number of other post-structuralists, were popular at the time of the painting. 

The grey seems to be an attempt by Johns to intellectualize his work. Grey is neutral; it doesn’t provoke emotional responses like colors. By using grey entirely, I feel that Johns was creating a challenge for himself. Namely, how could he maintain interest in a piece by using the most drab palette possible. He creates interest by using the medium of encaustic, by referencing Tennyson, and by the piece of paper (or possibly canvas) which he collages into the piece. 

Encaustic has such a sculptural, lifelike quality. By varying the amount of pigment you use, and how you layer the wax, you can create an infinite amount of texture and depth. The wax allows a dimensionality to Johns’ grey series. Because you can vary the opacity of the encaustic, Johns creates a dimensionality to the piece, which would be more difficult to do in monochrome with mere oil paints. Furthermore, he has created two different surface areas with the piece of canvas he lays above the name, and with the halving at the top of the painting.

In some of these series, colors, usually primary colors, peak out from underneath the swathes of grey. It’s an interesting inversion. In the classical tradition, greys are used as an underpainting, but here it is the color that is the underpainting. These types of subtleties are what make Johns’ grey clouds of paintings surprisingly captivating.