Jasper Johns - Editions & Works on Paper New York Tuesday, April 19, 2022 | Phillips
  • "It seems that etching can accept more kinds of marks than other print media can…In etching, the devices for attacking the plate are more elaborate…And for me, the most interesting about etching is the ability of the copper plate to store multiple layers of information. One can work in one way on a plate, later work in another way, and the print can show these different times in one moment."
    —Jasper Johns 

    • Provenance

      Universal Limited Art Editions, Bay Shore, New York
      Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson
      Acquired from the above by descent

    • Exhibited

      Stanford University Art Museum and T. W. Stanford Art Gallery, Stanford, California, The Anderson Print Collection at Stanford: Prints, Multiples and Monotypes 1968–1990, August 11 - December 13, 1992
      Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, An American Focus: The Anderson Graphic Arts Collection, October 7 - December 31, 2000
      Palm Springs Desert Museum, An American Focus: The Anderson Graphic Arts Collection, January 17 - March 25, 2001
      Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, Jasper Johns: 45 Years of Master Prints, October 15, 2005 - February 12, 2006
      Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Jasper Johns Mind/Mirror, September 29, 2021 - February 13, 2022 (other impressions of Summer and Winter)

    • Literature

      Universal Limited Art Editions 238-241
      Karin Breuer, An American Focus, The Anderson Graphic Arts Collection, pp. 134-35 (illustrated)
      Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and Philadelphia Museum of Art, Jasper Johns Mind/Mirror, pp. 291-92, 294-95 (other examples illustrated)

    • Catalogue Essay

      Layers upon layers of marks and symbolism are most evident in John's iconic four image series, The Seasons, 1987. Based on deeply personal paintings by the same name, this set of etching and aquatints is intermixed with the artist’s personal artifacts and fragmented imagery from earlier works, while depicting the different studios where each painting was created: Stony Point, New York (Spring), St. Martin in the French West Indies (Summer), Houston Street, New York City (Fall), and East 63rd Street, New York City (Winter).

      Curiosity about what image is impels Johns's heuristic approach to printmaking. It is the place in his work where the literalism of three dimensions most conspicuously gives way to the illusionism of two. If a painted flag, coterminous to its support, can be both that very thing and its picture, one printed on a page, surrounded by a margin, can only be an image of a flag or an image of a painting of one but never the thing itself. It makes sense, then, that Johns's prints, like his drawings, contained perspectival and volumetric illusionism some three decades before his paintings: they are all involved in the work of representation, if not exactly reproduction. Indeed, Johns's prints comprise an auto-anthology of familiar motifs, iconic paintings and sculptures, and details of them, all metamorphosed by their transposition from one medium into another. Surveyed chronologically,..., they present entwined timelines of Johns's motifs, means, and ideas. Yet the effect is by no means linear, given how images recur and recombine, far more promiscuously in his prints than in his paintings. Scott Rothkopf, with Carolos Basualdo, Sarah B. Vogelman, and Lauren Young, Editioned Prints, Jasper Johns Mind/Mirror, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and Philadelphia Musem of Art, 2022, p. 282.

    • Artist Biography

      Jasper Johns

      American • 1930

      Jasper Johns is a painter and printmaker who holds a foundational place in twentieth century art history. Quoting the evocative gestural brushstroke of the Abstract Expressionists, Johns represented common objects such as flags, targets, masks, maps and numbers: He sought to explore things "seen and not looked at, not examined" in pictorial form.  Drawing from common commercial and 'readymade' objects, such as newspaper clippings, Ballantine Ale and Savarin Coffee cans, Johns was a bridge to Pop, Dada and Conceptual art movements.

      Beyond the historical significance, each work by Johns is individually considered in sensuous form. A curiosity of medium led him to employ a range of materials from encaustic and commercial house paint to lithography, intaglio and lead relief.

      View More Works

10 Works from the Family Collection of Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson

16

The Seasons (ULAE 238-241)

1987
The complete set of four etching and aquatints in colors, on Somerset paper, with full margins.
all I. 19 1/4 x 12 3/4 in. (48.9 x 32.4 cm)
all S. 26 x 19 in. (66 x 48.3 cm)

All signed, dated and numbered 45/73 in pencil (there were also 16, 14, 14 and 13 artist's proofs respectively), published by Universal Limited Artist Editions, West Islip, New York, (with their blindstamp), all framed.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$100,000 - 150,000 

Sold for $163,800

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Editions & Works on Paper

New York Auction 19 - 21 April 2022