Corpse & Mirror
25 3/4 by 19 3/4 inchesCorpse and Mirror
(ULAE 167)
1976
intaglio: four copper plates on Rives BFK paper
paper: 25 3/4 by 19 3/4 inches
image: 10 1/2 x 14 inches
frame: 26 1/2 x 20 6/8 inches
edition: 50 with 10 AP's
& 2 PP's
signed & dated in pencil "J Johns '76" lower right
numbered in pencil lower left
printed by Atelier Crommelynck
published by Petersburg Press, 1976
Literature
Richard Field, The Prints of Jasper Johns 1960-1993: A Catalogue Raisonne, ULAE, New York, 1994, Catalogue Reference ULAE 167, n.p., another impression reproduced in full-page black and white.
Museum Collections
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
National Gallery of Art, Australia
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Exhibitions
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI, Jasper Johns, Prints and Multiples, 5/15 - 8/23/92
Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Jasper Johns, Prints and Multiples, 9/19 - 11/15/92
University Art Gallery, State University of New York at Albany, Jasper Johns, Prints and Multiples, 3/2 - 4/23/93
The University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Lethbridge, Alberta, 12/13/92 - 1/31/93
The University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Modern Bias / Contemporary Viewpoints, 2/22 - 3/31/96
Additional Photos
Like in the Cicada crosshatch images, in the Corpse & Mirror prints, Johns sought to evoke a New form, one that is growing and splitting in new visual directions. "The Cicada title has to do with the image of something bursting through its skin, which is what they do. You have all those shells where the back splits and they've emerged. And basically that kind of splitting form is what I tried to suggest." Johns illustrated this splitting by employing lines of primary and secondary colors.
JASPER JOHNS CORPSE & MIRROR
Beginning with his 1972 painting Untitled, Jasper Johns developed his motif of crosshatched lines, experimenting with colors, patterns, mirroring and reversals. According to the artist, the inspiration for his crosshatched works came from a pattern he glimpsed on a car that quickly passed him on a highway, "I only saw it for a second, but knew immediately that I was going to use it. It had all the qualities that interest me – literalness, repetitiveness, an obsessive quality, order with dumbness, and the possibility of a complete lack of meaning." Over the next ten years, Johns produced many variations on the crosshatch theme in paintings, drawings and prints.
Corpse and Mirror, 1976
Unique Trial proof numbered 3/5
National Gallery of Art
Like in the Cicada crosshatch images, in the Corpse & Mirror prints, Johns sought to evoke a New form, one that is growing and splitting in new visual directions. "The Cicada title has to do with the image of something bursting through its skin, which is what they do. You have all those shells where the back splits and they've emerged. And basically that kind of splitting form is what I tried to suggest." Johns illustrated this splitting by employing lines of primary and secondary colors.
Throughout his career, Johns experimented with showing the same idea differently, repeating forms and motifs in various media. As evidenced by his work from the 1970s and early 1980s, the crosshatch motif lent itself exceptionally well to this working method. Printmaking allowed Johns to elaborate on his compositional ideas and his printmaking influenced his painting just as much as his paintings influenced his prints. In fact, the use of crosshatching in both prints and paintings is significant. Johns has taken a technique historically used in drawing and printmaking to evoke shade and depth, making it the subject of his work. Variantions and unique works from this series can be view in the extensive collection Jasper Johns donated to the National Gallery of Art.
Author and Project Director at the Wildenstein Institute Roberta Bernstein observes: "the crosshatchings are the first Jasper Johns paintings that can be properly called abstract, though they are more like drawings than the gestural abstractions of Jackson Pollock or Jack Tworkov, and they bristle with citations from Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, the Surrealists, and other early-twentieth-century figures."
