the infra-iconography of jasper johns

The Infra-Iconography of Jasper JohnsAuthor(s): Joan CarpenterSource: Art Journal, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Spring, 1977), pp. 221-227Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/776200 .

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The Infra-lconography Johns

JOAN CARPENTER

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

-T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

A few critics, notably Max Kozloff,1 but also Alan Solomon2 and Leo Steinberg,3 have drawn attention in a general way to the presence of collage materials beneath Jasper Johns' encaustic flags, targets, and other works of the 1950s-without, however, exploring even those motifs and structures visible to the naked eye. Most critics who wrote about these pictures did not allude to the collage elements at all. The imme- diate impact of the targets and flags provoked a response formulated not so much from searching exploration of the works as from some preconceived notions of symbolism and facture that the paintings might be employed to illustrate.

The rich texture and tonal variety of Johns' encaustic paintings of the middle and later 1950s is, in part, a function of the

printed materials absorbed into their surfaces. Some frag- ments of this collage imagery can be discerned by the naked

eye-the figure at the lower left of Target'with Four Faces

(Fig. 1), for example-but most of it is obscured by its overlay of encaustic. That the inner, mostly veiled, collage elements-rendered more legible by infrared photography (Figs. 2, 3, 4)-were very consciously organized is attested to

by their organic relation to both the binding surface emblem and the painterly patterns of encaustic. Moreover, this con- sistency is as evident on the iconographic level as it is in formal terms, for it becomes apparent upon close study that the collage papers are in no sense random retrievals from the studio floor or trashcan. We will find that the veiled inner levels of the Target, as well as of similar collage and encaustic

pictures made by Johns in the 1950s, are consonant with the

content of the immediately perceived image. As with an

iceberg, both the structure and substance of what is below the surface have much to do with what we see above it.

In Target with Four Faces, the orientation of the lines of

print in the scraps cut from newspaper determines an activity that, like the rotation implied by concentric circles, acceler- ates in each succeeding round until motion is halted by the

right-angle alignment of the corner papers. This movement, along with the oblique juxtaposition of striped elements and some irregularly torn edges, animates the simple circular format of the inner collage much as Johns' brushwork enli- vens the absolute contours of the painted target. Both inner and outer levels of the picture are tautened aesthetically by the equilibrium generated by a simple, disciplined design conception that is realized through the elaborate build-up of minute components.

When told that his very early collages (c. 1952), which are

arranged in grids and have an intimate character, resembled those of Kurt Schwitters, Jasper Johns rebelled against the

suggestion and even destroyed some of them.4 However, the

collages that he clothed with encaustic in his Flags and Tar- gets continued in the same formal and expressive vein as the "naked" ones that preceded them. For example, the under- sides of the little keys of the Construction with a Piano of 1954, his earliest surviving work, anticipate the hinged boxes arrayed across his Targets with casts.5 Johns inserted a full- face mask into a compartment under a collage in an untitled work of 1959 (Moody Collection, Los Angeles); he had only to

SPRING 1977

of Jasper

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Fig. 2. Jasper Johns, Target with Four Faces, infrared photograph.

Fig. 1. Jasper Johns, Target with Four Faces, encaustic and collage on canvas with objects, 1955. The Museum of Modern Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Scull.

Fig. 3. Detail of Fig. 2, showing silhouette of Billy Graham from behind.

Fig. 4. Detail of Fig. 2.

ART JOURNAL, XXXVI/3 222



Fig. 5. Jasper Johns, Flag, encaustic, oil and collage on canvas, 421/4 x 601/2", 1955. The Museum of Modern Art.

trim the tops and bottoms of four similar plaster casts to fit them to a new home above the target. The paper scraps in both collage constructions have a right-angle alignment in accord with the same taste that later chose the stripes of the American flag as a dominant motif.

The headline proclaiming "History and Biography" above some book reviews in the Target with Four Faces collage (Fig. 4) suggests that just as Schwitters incorporated the contents of his pockets into his work, so Johns includes the miscellany of his own daily progress here. A laundry ticket with "soap" and "bleach" checked, a bank receipt for the deposit of 15 dollars, and a torn letter, all visible in Fig. 4, catch the eye because they create, with a personal touch, light tonal patches that contrast with the more densely figured and mechanically regular newspaper cuttings. In the right quad- rant of the Target, a label bearing the address and telephone number of the Hotel Bilbao in Tetuan reminds us that Johns was a close friend and neighbor of Robert Rauschenberg in the early 1950s, since eight identical labels appear in an untitled Rauschenberg collage of about 1952.

Since one of Johns' early patrons was an astrologer,6 a newspaper horoscope (Fig. 3, far right) and article on astrol- ogy (in the outer-most target ring), and a page torn from a book concerning a similar subject (Fig. 2, lower right corner), may conceivably have autobiographical overtones. At any rate, astrological material seems appropriate in a collage design of wheels whirling within wheels which suggests the paths traced by the planets of the solar system. My interpretation in this regard is strengthened by the identity of the cut- out figure at lower left who witnesses this celestial vision- Jasper Johns recently revealed that it is a photograph of Billy Graham.7

Jasper Johns has described his chosen surface configura- tions of numbers, letters, maps, targets, and flags as " 'pre- formed, conventional, depersonalized, factual, exterior, ele-

Fig. 6. Jasper Johns, Flag, infrared photograph.

ments.' "8 Within a simple given framework, he saw the

possibility of a created complexity:

Using the design of the American flag took care of a great deal for me because I didn't have to design it ... So I went on to similar things like the targets .. .-things the mind already knows. That gave me room to work on other levels.9

Some critics have interpreted these "other levels" as Johns' application of Abstract Expressionist brushwork to flat emblems;10 others consider them a commentary on human and political situations existing outside the paintings. Neither of these views is completely inaccurate because the density

SPRING 1977 223



Fig. 7. Detail of Fig. 6.

of the targets and flags permits a multitude of analyses. But many of Johns' "other levels" can be seen to reside, formally and iconographically, within the pictures themselves, in their veiled collages, and not merely upon their textured encaustic surfaces nor in discussions of the "significance" of flags and

targets. That an unschooled eye may spot what sophisticated,

"knowledgeable," eyes tend to overlook in Jasper Johns' paintings of the 1950s is illustrated in the discovery made by a casual visitor to the Museum of Modern Art, home of the Flag (Figs. 5 and 6), then dated 1954. She saw, through the encaustic veiling, a panel cut from the Dondi comic strip (Fig. 7) bearing the date February 15, 1956, obviously at variance with the painting's assigned date. When the Museum informed Johns of the problem presented by the presence of the later date, he replied that while the Flag was probably begun in 1954, it was completed in 1955 (its dating in the catalogue of the Jewish Museum retrospective). Johns added that the Flag had been damaged in 1956 during a studio party, and that he had patched up its injuries with contemporary scraps of newspaper. He described these repairs and mentioned later ones made in oil paint, which can be seen under ultraviolet light.

Since Johns indicated that he probably began the picture in 1954, we may conclude that he worked on it, if only intermit- tently, for over a year and a half. Our perception of the aesthetic integrity of the Flag is enhanced rather than chal- lenged by these revelations, however, because they testify to Johns' investment in his artistic processes. His method in the encaustic and collage paintings of the 1950s is one of gradual accretion, which may at first seem at odds with the instanta-

neous impact of his standardized emblems, but is, in fact, what turns them from concepts into art.

The Flag embodies the efforts and deliberations of almost two years. Surely an endeavor of this duration was not di- rected merely toward fashioning a textured paint surface. If

nothing else, Johns entertained himself with the collage components of the Flag as he assembled them during this

period; at the very least, it is interesting to know the artist's own diversions. Closer study of the veiled collage, however, reveals that Johns considered it much more than an amuse- ment: it functions to intensify the enigmatic resonance that the Flag establishes even on cursory examination, and it effects an inner and outer structural duality whose corre- spondence will impress the most formalist of critics. The impact is heightened by the realization that neither the col-

lage fabric nor the flag design that veils it can assume full aesthetic existence without the presence-alternately seen

clearly or only sensed-of the other. They are not autono- mous entities but fused formal and iconographical members whose apparent disparity (the secret playful commentary of the collage, more subjectively constructed than the outright, self-evident flag) yields a tension that makes the equilibrium of the Whole more satisfying.

The formal identity of the Flag and its veiled collage is

immediately apparent from a comparison of ordinary and infrared photographs (Figs. 5 and 6). The collage composition beneath the stripes is, like them, less interesting (and spar- ser) than is the constellation of little papers under the more intricate stars. The lines of the newsprint under the stripes generally either parallel them or are set at right angles to them, in which case the vertical newspaper columns are turned 90 degrees to perform as horizontal streamers. The lines of copy spangled beneath the stars intersect at oblique angles determined by the outer design and are indispensable to the luminous effect of the encaustic surface.

The concept of the collage medium as play-and here a

playful reminiscence of the Construction with a Piano-is pointed up in the Flag collage by the presence of advertise- ments for pianos and organs (Fig. 8). There is also a receipt for player pianos which, like Jasper Johns' flags and targets, have a pre-set form but also (since they can be sounded without the insertion of a commercially cut roll) admit of free creative activity. It would hardly seem accidental that a cross- word puzzle is included (Fig. 7), since it alludes simultane- ously to Johns' preoccupation with "word play" and to the projection of this concern in the grid compositions of letters. Johns indulges in some personal art history which is then obscured from his critics' sight by incorporating into the Flag collage a fragment of a target (lower right of center) and an outline map of the United States (Fig. 8) in newspaper graph- ics.

An exploration of the collage underpinnings of the Target with Four Faces revealed, among other things, astrological material. The Flag's collage fabric comprises more mundane printed matter and assumes a prosaic tone. Here we find

political and commercial texts. Johns employed scraps of the business pages as his newspaper to construct a matrix of stock notices (Fig. 8), columns on stock and commodity prices (Figs. 8 and 9), want ads, and insurance (Allstate is one of the companies represented; Fig. 9) and real estate adver-




vened by a circular movement and perfectly consonant with the surface configuration. Newspaper elements in this collage are culled primarily from the travel section (advertise- ments for airlines, hotels, resorts) and from theater, sports, and comics pages. A newspaper fragment that is prominent on the Green Target's surface, a photo captioned "Woman Hurt as Autos Crash," warns of the risks taken by travelers. Scraps cut from an Alexander's department store sale spread reappear throughout the wheeling inner structure as a con- stant in the allover patterning. In the target's center, at the heart of the collage, and in the lower right corner, can be found a more personal, intimate component of the infra- iconography: handwritten papers and a typed sheet-perhaps a mimeographed handout from a performance-about the work of Johns' friend, the dancer Merce Cunningham, (lower right edge). As he did in the Flag collage, Johns here draws attention to the playful nature of his medium by in-

cluding a newspaper word game, a "Jumble." In harmony with the greater "estheticism" of the Green Target is the insertion of a page torn from a book about Benedetto Croce, well known for his writings on the philosophy of art and art criticism.

Does Johns intend us to become aware of his veiled structures and iconography, and if so, to what extent? That ques- tion gains some poignancy when one recalls that an early interpretation of the targets and flags was that "Johns chose

Fig. 8. Detail of Fig. 6. his subjects to make them disappear altogether."1' (Now that we see his pictures clearly, that notion takes on a meaning rather different from its original implication). Johns' own posture alternates between silence and cryptic statement.

tisements. Planted among these is a selection from The Na- tion with its distinctive logotype (Fig. 9), articles on political parties and the "new deal" of the 1930s, (both at upper left in the field of stars), and a New York paper's invitation to its readers to complete the phrase "If I were Ike." An official air is lent to these artistic proceedings by the inclusion in the flag of a United States government document furnishing identification for its holder (lower right in the field of stars). And what, finally, could better identify the work as "Ameri- can" than the comic strip segments (Figs. 7 and 8), of which the Dondi panel is most visible on the surface. They repre- sent an element of Johns' complex and poetic iconography in the veiled collages that, less than a decade later, would literally come to the surface of painting as an icon of Pop art.

The formal complexity and iconographic density of the

collages beneath Johns' targets and flags can vary. The papers assembled beneath the Green Target of 1955 (Figs. 10 and 11) respond to Johns' more abstract, less emblematic conception of that particular work as a whole, a conception at variance in :; both physical appearance and allusive meaning from the

Target with Four Faces and Flag. The monochromatic surface here presents us less with a "real" target than a spectral one, materializing from the nuancing of the green encaustic: we are not so concerned with what the image "represents" as with its tonality and facture. Since the Green Target lacks the arresting, emblematic character of the other targets and has no relief sculpture, the viewer's eye is necessarily more occupied with the purely painterly qualities of its surface and . . ... the collage underlay than is the case with the Target with Four Faces or the Flag. The collage forms an allover design, enli- Fig. 9. Detail of Fig 6.

SPRING 1977 225



Fig. 10. Jasper Johns, Green Target, encaustic and collage on canvas, 60 x 60", 1955. The Museum of Modern Art.

Fig. 11. Jasper Johns, Green Target, infrared photograph.

This attitude has led some critics to conclude that Johns intended to communicate nothing intimate or personal in his

early pictures,12 and finally, perhaps, invested them with no

iconographic meaning at all. The 1950s targets and flags are

especially singled out as "splendidly executed works ... which offer pleasure in the nuance of the painting, but which

finally spend themselves in their determination to mean

nothing."'3 But the fact remains that a good deal of Johns'

collage iconography is manifest on the picture surface, where it has been visible since the beginning, as the early photographs demonstrate. This is no accident, for as Johns himself says, "there is a great deal of intention in painting... one has to assume that the artist is free to do what he pleases ... that he had choices, that he could do something else."'4

Printed material has been both the physical substance and

frequently the subject of Johns' emblematic imagery. In his

very first one-man show Johns exhibited Book (also known as Hidden Worlds; 1957; Private Collection, New York), an open book swathed with encaustic; he squashed a folded newspaper between two canvas panels to create 4 the News (1962). Book and newspaper pages, of course, furnished the raw material of the veiled collages of his targets and flags; they had only to be snipped or torn to fulfill the artist's purpose. Johns further broke down whole books and newspapers in order to isolate and recombine individual letters and ciphers on the surfaces of his alphabet and number pictures. The

large Figure 5 (1955) and the letters arrayed across Gray Alphabets (1956), for example, were cut from newsprint;




Johns employed the very substance of his inspiration to realize his formal ends.

Johns' choice of printed matter as material and motif is much more than just felicitous. He conceives of painting as a

"language," and, like language, subject to change and multi-

ple possibilities of inflection. This "language," of course, is not to be identified with any spoken tongue. Johns tells us to

apprehend his message with our eyes: "My idea has always been that in painting the way ideas are conveyed is through the way it looks."'5 The "ideas" he wishes to communicate have a nature analogous to the collage medium that helps to set them forth. They involve mental play, a stretch of the

imagination that, as in the evolution of language, assigns to

given concepts new or expanded meanings. Johns says:

There seems to be a sort of 'pressure area' 'underneath' language which operates in such a way as to force the language to change. (I'm believing painting to be a language, or wishing language to be any sort of recognition.) If one takes delight in that kind of

changing process, one moves toward new recognitions, names, images.'6

He goes on:

Most of my thoughts involve impurities ... I think it is a form of play, or a form of exercise, and it's in part mental and in part visual (and God knows what that is) but that's one of the things we like about the visual arts. The terms in which we're accus- tomed to thinking are adulterated or abused. Or, a term that we're not used to using or which we have not used in our experience becomes very clear. Or, what is explicit suddenly isn't.17

The collages that Jasper Johns veils with targets or flags are like annotations to those orthodox familiar, standardized outer images; the collages are the visual equivalent of "pressure areas 'underneath' language."

It would be a truism to say that Johns' aesthetic invention takes place only within a system of constraints or givens (donnees) rather than in a state of "freedom." What especially characterizes the work of Johns, however, is that the

"givens" are not just a priori stylistic commitments and re- ceived values, ideas, and traditions, but rather all-embracing structural emblems which he himself wills at the very outset and then works into and against, so to speak, in the process of realizing his art. His painstaking build-up of collage and encaustic ironically culminates in the same banal surface

configuration with which, in a sense, he starts. But what was heretofore a thin conceptual emblem has acquired a material and poetic substantiality. We "arrive where we started," as Eliot said, "and know the place for the first time."

We cannot explain the enigmas that give these early works of Johns their peculiar resonance. But a study of their collage materials enables us better to understand the components of this mystery, the unique equilibrium of seemingly contradic-

tory plastic and poetic forces on which it depends. It was

long ago noted that one aspect of this enigma was the inher- ent contradiction (and hence, tension) between the absolute flatness of the emblems as such and the space-implying painterliness of the encaustic handling through which they were realized.'8 But that painterliness is equally a function of the flicker of light and dark caused by the collage materials- whether legible or not-over the whole surface. A compara- ble tension exists poetically insofar as the emblem in itself has only a generalized, abstract, or "flat" meaning which is then "shaded" with detail in the form of the particular experi- ences and events recorded in the legible newsprint. And Johns lets us see just enough of this to convince us that it exists in submerged form throughout the picture. That the

majority of these collage elements are invisible does not detract from their role in the progressive deepening of each work's poetry. On the contrary, the enigmatic space-both visual and mental-in which Johns suspends his early motifs

depends upon a perfect concert of forces, whose collage components can only now be fully appreciated for their

unique plastic and poetic role. U

I wish to thank: Roger van Voorhees, who first brought to my attention the possibilities of infrared photography for study of the work of Jasper Johns; Kate Keller of The Museum of Modern Art who made the infrared photographs used in this article; Professors Robert Rosenblum and William Rubin of the Institute of Fine Arts for their advice and encouragement; and Ms. Barbara Rose (see note 7).

Max Kozloff, Jasper Johns, New York, n.d., pp. 16-17, p. 38. 2 Alan R. Solomon, Jasper Johns, New York, 1964, pp. 9-10. 3 Leo Steinberg, "Jasper Johns: The First Seven Years of his Art," reprinted in Other Criteria, New York, 1972, p. 44. 4 Ibid., p. 21. 5 Solomon, op. cit., p. 9. 6 Barbara Rose, "Decoys and Doubles: Jasper Johns and the Modernist Mind," Arts Magazine, Vol. 50, No. 9, May, 1976, p. 73. 7 I am indebted to Barbara Rose for this information, which she conveyed to me after reading my paper and speaking about it with Jasper Johns. I also thank her for her valuable critical and editorial suggestions based on her thorough familiarity with the artist's work.

The fact that Johns remembered the identity of the veiled figure in the Target with Four Faces after some 20 years supports my contentions regard- ing the significance of the collage materials-both visible and invisible-in the work. 8 James Burr, "Into Art with the Star-Spangled Banner," Apollo, April 1975, p. 327. Italics mine. 9 Steinberg, op. cit., p. 31. Italics mine. 10 Clement Greenberg, "After Abstract Expressionism," Art International, Vol. VI, No. 8, October, 1962, p. 26. 1 Steinberg, op. cit., p. 25. 12 Solomon, op. cit., p. 6. 13 Dore Ashton, "Acceleration in Discovery and Consumption," Studio, Vol. 167, No. 212, May 1964, p. 212. 14 G. R. Swenson, "What is Pop Art?", Art News, Vol. 62, No. 10, February 1964, pp. 66-67. '5 Joseph P. Young, "Jaspers Johns: An Appraisal," Art International, Vol. XIII, No. 7, September 1969, p. 51. 16 Solomon, op. cit., p. 15. 17 Young, op. cit., p. 51. 18 Greenberg, op. cit., p. 26.

Joan Carpenter is a student at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

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the infra-iconography of jasper johns

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