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Lot Essay
Jasper Johns’ series 0-9 is arguably the most important series in Johns’ entire graphic oeuvre, and almost certainly one of the most significant in modern printmaking.
Famous for his appropriation of everyday symbols, Johns’ involvement with numbers has been the most intense and protracted of all. It first flourished in the mid-1950s through the 1960s, and he has returned to it in each of the decades since. He has executed more variations on numbers than any other subject including the first and best known of his signature images, the American flag. These variations include sixty-six paintings and sculptures and sixty-three drawings.
Printmaking has played a significant role, with twenty-five series and individual prints with numbers as the sole imagery. It was employed early on, thanks to Tatyana Grosman, one of the seminal figures in modern American printmaking. Grosman, through sheer force of personality, combined with an ability to communicate a sense of artistic mission, brought into her Universal Limited Art Editions (U.L.A.E.) workshop on Long Island many of the innovative artists of the fifties and sixties. She had first seen Johns’ paintings in the exhibition Sixteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art, in 1959.
Uncertain whether printmaking was a worthwhile activity, Johns was persuaded to accept her invitation to work at U.L.A.E. by Larry Rivers, who told him that prints helped pay the rent. The invitation actually took the form of Grosman’s tried and trusted technique of delivering lithographic stones to an artist’s studio. Being heavy, and therefore not easily returned, artists often felt obliged to at least experiment with them before asking for them to be collected. Fortunately, many found the satiny surface of the stone seductive. Johns’ primary memory of his own first encounter with the medium was having to ask Robert Rauschenberg for help in carrying them up to his lower Manhattan studio when they arrived in 1960.
Johns and Rauschenberg were in a relationship for many years, beginning in 1954 when Johns’ returned to N.Y. after service in Korea. It was in Rauschenberg’s studio that dealer Leo Castelli first saw Johns’ work, prompting Castelli to offer him his first solo show. It was from this show that Alfred Barr, founding director of MoMA, bought four of Johns’ works, setting him on the path to stardom.
Johns drew a zero on his first stone and over the next two years his engagement with both the motif and the medium deepened. A frieze of numbers at the top was added, derived from a second drawing, so that the stone now carried two elements never previously associated. As he had never made a lithograph before, his concept of what was possible was sketchy; he knew only that he could make corrections and that impressions could be taken at every stage of development.
Fortunately, Johns’ education in the art of printing on stone was guided by Robert Blackburn (1920-2003), artist, printer/printmaker and teacher. Blackburn had mastered lithography in France, principally for his own creative work, and he printed Johns’ work between 1960 and 1962.
Johns’ idea for a portfolio based on numbers had to wait until 1963, when adequate supplies of high-quality, handmade paper became available. He set about creating a suite of all ten numbers, using the same stone for the entire project, building each successive image on traces of the last. By using the same stone, making discreet changes with each subsequent number, Johns exploited the idea that both change and continuity are inherent in a numerical sequence.
This working method meant that remnants of previous states can be seen, to varying degrees, as the series progresses. This creates a palimpsest effect that is related to the ‘0 through 9’ motif developed in other single, non-serial works. To supplement this progressive, linear method of working on one stone, Johns used different colors of ink to create three different sets of the prints: black, gray, and color, the set offered here.
Each state of the stone was thus printed in three colors before Johns reworked it for the next number. In addition, Johns created an extra stone for each of the principle, single figures, which added another layer of marks. This extra stone was printed on top of the figure that corresponded to the edition number, so that, for example, in the present set, which is number 4/10, the extra stone was printed on top of the numeral 4. Thus despite being multiples, each set of 0-9 is unique, because one sheet in every set is unique. Although complicated to explain, this method of working is, practically speaking, fairly straightforward in an additive way, and in conception it reflects Johns’ concern with presenting the same thing in multiple ways through changes both extreme and subtle.
Robert Rosenblum, the prominent professor, curator, critic and author of a text on the series, was one of the first scholars to write about Jasper Johns’ use of numerals, targets and the alphabet. He wrote in 1963 that Johns’ "...flags and targets, numbers and letters... heroically attempt to find again those qualities of ritualistic beauty, symbolism and discipline once provided to artist and public by standardized classical and Christian iconography."
Famous for his appropriation of everyday symbols, Johns’ involvement with numbers has been the most intense and protracted of all. It first flourished in the mid-1950s through the 1960s, and he has returned to it in each of the decades since. He has executed more variations on numbers than any other subject including the first and best known of his signature images, the American flag. These variations include sixty-six paintings and sculptures and sixty-three drawings.
Printmaking has played a significant role, with twenty-five series and individual prints with numbers as the sole imagery. It was employed early on, thanks to Tatyana Grosman, one of the seminal figures in modern American printmaking. Grosman, through sheer force of personality, combined with an ability to communicate a sense of artistic mission, brought into her Universal Limited Art Editions (U.L.A.E.) workshop on Long Island many of the innovative artists of the fifties and sixties. She had first seen Johns’ paintings in the exhibition Sixteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art, in 1959.
Uncertain whether printmaking was a worthwhile activity, Johns was persuaded to accept her invitation to work at U.L.A.E. by Larry Rivers, who told him that prints helped pay the rent. The invitation actually took the form of Grosman’s tried and trusted technique of delivering lithographic stones to an artist’s studio. Being heavy, and therefore not easily returned, artists often felt obliged to at least experiment with them before asking for them to be collected. Fortunately, many found the satiny surface of the stone seductive. Johns’ primary memory of his own first encounter with the medium was having to ask Robert Rauschenberg for help in carrying them up to his lower Manhattan studio when they arrived in 1960.
Johns and Rauschenberg were in a relationship for many years, beginning in 1954 when Johns’ returned to N.Y. after service in Korea. It was in Rauschenberg’s studio that dealer Leo Castelli first saw Johns’ work, prompting Castelli to offer him his first solo show. It was from this show that Alfred Barr, founding director of MoMA, bought four of Johns’ works, setting him on the path to stardom.
Johns drew a zero on his first stone and over the next two years his engagement with both the motif and the medium deepened. A frieze of numbers at the top was added, derived from a second drawing, so that the stone now carried two elements never previously associated. As he had never made a lithograph before, his concept of what was possible was sketchy; he knew only that he could make corrections and that impressions could be taken at every stage of development.
Fortunately, Johns’ education in the art of printing on stone was guided by Robert Blackburn (1920-2003), artist, printer/printmaker and teacher. Blackburn had mastered lithography in France, principally for his own creative work, and he printed Johns’ work between 1960 and 1962.
Johns’ idea for a portfolio based on numbers had to wait until 1963, when adequate supplies of high-quality, handmade paper became available. He set about creating a suite of all ten numbers, using the same stone for the entire project, building each successive image on traces of the last. By using the same stone, making discreet changes with each subsequent number, Johns exploited the idea that both change and continuity are inherent in a numerical sequence.
This working method meant that remnants of previous states can be seen, to varying degrees, as the series progresses. This creates a palimpsest effect that is related to the ‘0 through 9’ motif developed in other single, non-serial works. To supplement this progressive, linear method of working on one stone, Johns used different colors of ink to create three different sets of the prints: black, gray, and color, the set offered here.
Each state of the stone was thus printed in three colors before Johns reworked it for the next number. In addition, Johns created an extra stone for each of the principle, single figures, which added another layer of marks. This extra stone was printed on top of the figure that corresponded to the edition number, so that, for example, in the present set, which is number 4/10, the extra stone was printed on top of the numeral 4. Thus despite being multiples, each set of 0-9 is unique, because one sheet in every set is unique. Although complicated to explain, this method of working is, practically speaking, fairly straightforward in an additive way, and in conception it reflects Johns’ concern with presenting the same thing in multiple ways through changes both extreme and subtle.
Robert Rosenblum, the prominent professor, curator, critic and author of a text on the series, was one of the first scholars to write about Jasper Johns’ use of numerals, targets and the alphabet. He wrote in 1963 that Johns’ "...flags and targets, numbers and letters... heroically attempt to find again those qualities of ritualistic beauty, symbolism and discipline once provided to artist and public by standardized classical and Christian iconography."