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JASPER JOHNS
(American, born 1930)
Usuyuki, 1979-1981
Color screenprint on buff handmade laid paper, 50/85
27 5/8 x 45 7/16”
Purchase: Gaines Challenge Fund 1982.19.2

For Jasper Johns, who has been called the “zen master” of contemporary American art, art is an intellectual exercise. He was born in Augusta, Georgia, and although he briefly attended the University of South Carolina and an art school in New York, he is considered a self-taught artist. Johns began to exhibit in New York in the 1950s, and, with Robert Rauschenberg, his work was credited with forging a path beyond the abstraction and expressionism of an earlier generation. Often characterized as a Pop artist for his use of familiar objects and common materials—flags, numbers, targets, maps, and newspapers—Johns challenges the idea that we take conventional ideas and images for granted. Early in his career, he began experimenting with traditional printmaking techniques to produce innovative works. “Usuyuki,” a Japanese term meaning “light snow,” is the title given to a series of prints the artist created in the early 1980s, which invoke a snow’s ephemeral beauty. Made with handmade paper to mimic a collage of newsprint scraps, Usuyuki both invites and frustrates the viewer who tries to decipher the work. Overlaid with crosshatching, the complex linear pattern creates an illusion of three dimensions, while the underling rectangular grid and brightly colored, circular accents reinforce the paper’s flatness. This spatial ambiguity, coupled with John’s carefully modulated tones and the newsprint collage, creates a work of exquisite calculation.