Lot Essay
Jasper Johns began printmaking in 1960 when Tatyana Grosman, founder of Universal Limited Art Editions, invited Johns to her small printmaking studio on Long Island. Their collaboration inaugurated a printmaking renaissance which set the standard for quality in contemporary printmaking. Tatyana and her husband, Maurice Grosman, had emigrated to America in 1943 and brought with them the French tradition of the Peintres-Gravures. Prior to their endeavors, printmaking had been largely ignored by the previous generation of artists in America.
Through experimentation at ULAE, Jasper Johns discovered that lithography was the perfect medium for the duplication and revisitation of significant iconographic themes utilized in his work. With lithography, Johns was able to rework the stone, printing different states on different papers using various inks. Johns found that this was the perfect medium to investigate and retranslate earlier paintings, drawings and sculpture.
Savarin, one of Johns's most iconic images, was based on the 1960 bronze Painted Bronze. Though based on a sculpture, the Savarin subject, widely considered his covert self-portrait, is examined most extensively through printmaking. Johns used the Savarin image in the First Etchings portfolio, Decoy, a series of lithographs from 1978-79, and monotypes produced at ULAE. In Savarin (ULAE 220) (fig. 2), the Savarin can is gray and black above a red arm with the initials E.M. This is a direct reference to the Edvard Munch self-portrait from 1895 which shows a portrait of the artist with a skeletal arm along the bottom of the lithograph (fig. 1)
In Savarin, the monumental can of paintbrushes is seen straight ahead on a wood table with the crosshatched surface in the background. The Savarin can represents the past while the crosshatched background represents what Johns was working on at the time, making this the ideal image to use for the poster for the 1977 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Savarin, in its various forms, has come to represent Johns's autobiography. As Richard Field reflects:
Indeed one does wonder how much Johns is haunted by the idea of ceasing to paint. In Savarin, Johns's brushes, coated with the color of his own work, loom up in scale far in excess of the original Painted Bronze of 1960, and appear as a monumental surrogate for the painter. Whether the artist has put up his brushes for the day or whether they have been permanently stilled as implied by the 1960 sculpture is the ever present question. It is a mystery about creativity that is as profound as the non-existent painting of the background. No print from Johns has ever attained the sensuous beauty of these transparent washes and delicately undulating colors. (R. S. Field, Jasper Johns Prints 1970-1977, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 1978, p. 51)
Through experimentation at ULAE, Jasper Johns discovered that lithography was the perfect medium for the duplication and revisitation of significant iconographic themes utilized in his work. With lithography, Johns was able to rework the stone, printing different states on different papers using various inks. Johns found that this was the perfect medium to investigate and retranslate earlier paintings, drawings and sculpture.
Savarin, one of Johns's most iconic images, was based on the 1960 bronze Painted Bronze. Though based on a sculpture, the Savarin subject, widely considered his covert self-portrait, is examined most extensively through printmaking. Johns used the Savarin image in the First Etchings portfolio, Decoy, a series of lithographs from 1978-79, and monotypes produced at ULAE. In Savarin (ULAE 220) (fig. 2), the Savarin can is gray and black above a red arm with the initials E.M. This is a direct reference to the Edvard Munch self-portrait from 1895 which shows a portrait of the artist with a skeletal arm along the bottom of the lithograph (fig. 1)
In Savarin, the monumental can of paintbrushes is seen straight ahead on a wood table with the crosshatched surface in the background. The Savarin can represents the past while the crosshatched background represents what Johns was working on at the time, making this the ideal image to use for the poster for the 1977 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Savarin, in its various forms, has come to represent Johns's autobiography. As Richard Field reflects:
Indeed one does wonder how much Johns is haunted by the idea of ceasing to paint. In Savarin, Johns's brushes, coated with the color of his own work, loom up in scale far in excess of the original Painted Bronze of 1960, and appear as a monumental surrogate for the painter. Whether the artist has put up his brushes for the day or whether they have been permanently stilled as implied by the 1960 sculpture is the ever present question. It is a mystery about creativity that is as profound as the non-existent painting of the background. No print from Johns has ever attained the sensuous beauty of these transparent washes and delicately undulating colors. (R. S. Field, Jasper Johns Prints 1970-1977, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 1978, p. 51)