Art School Confidential Critique
Simpsons Modern Art
Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg
- In a relationship for 6 years
- Jasper Johns was a shy and retreating person who still rarely gives interviews
- Robert Rauschenberg was a pulsating and outgoing person.
- Although different in personality, they brought the best out of each other in the studio. Rauschenberg’s spontaneous, excited energy collided with the retreating intellectual and well-read Johns.
Jasper Johns
To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.”
-Jasper Johns
- Jasper Johns artwork was both praised and ridiculed by critics in the art world.
- Slow and deliberate style who “obsessively repeat themes”
- He used symbols that were already well known because he didn’t have to create anything new.
- Instead he could focus on his painting style to relay the message that he wanted
- Flag is his most famouse work of art.
- He thought of Flag as a riddle more than patriotism.
- He wanted the viewer to question what art is or is not
“Is the a Painted American Flag or a Painting of an American Flag?”
Flag (1958) sold to hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen in 2010 for $110 million
“Using this design of the American flag took care of a great deal for me because I didn’t have to design it. So I want on to similar things like the targets things the mind already knows. That gave me room to work on other levels. A picture ought to be looked at the same way you look at a radiator.”
0 through 9
- Presents the viewer with the numerical figures 0–9,
- Each number layered over one another
- While each number is visible, it is difficult to discern them individually
- Johns did many painted series of numbers
Targets
Robert Rauschenberg
“Painting relates to both art and life.
Neither can be made. I try to act in that gap between the two”
- Art works called Combines
- Combining paint with objects
- Used newspaper and magazine photographs in his paintings
- Separate parts working together in a composition
- He used the tools of artmaking with ordinary things
- “I consider the text of a newspaper, the detail of photograph, the stitch in a baseball, and the filament in a light bulb as fundamental to the painting as brush stroke or enamel drip of paint.”
Buffalo II (1964)
- Made soon after the assassination of John F Kennedy
- Features images that represented the ideals of American progress
- He mirrored the political and social climate around him at the time of the 60’s
Sold for $88.8 million
Skyway (1964)
White Painting 1951
- Canvas acting like a screen that reflects various features within a room like lighting and shadows.
- Calling them clocks, Rauschenberg said those sensitive enough, could read them, know how many people are in the room, the time of the day, and the existing weather conditions.
Erased de Kooning drawing 1953
Sold for US$88.8m, 2019
- Rauschenberg approached de Kooning and requested a piece of artwork to erase.
- Rauschenberg erased the charcoal, pencil, oil painting
- Jasper Jones finished the task of labeling and framing the artwork. He inscribed the following words on the now obliterated painting:
- This painting leaves the viewer with a sense of enigma and mystery, leaving us with a plethora of possible interpretations.
Automobile tire print (1953)
- Records a twenty-two-foot tread mark of a model A Ford’s wheel.
- Glued together twenty sheets of typewriter paper
- He poured black paint in front of the rear tire of the Ford and drove over the paper.
- Created a continuous, black tread mark