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Lot Essay
In 1960 Tatyana Grossman gave a lithographic stone to Jasper Johns, and at that time lithography, considered the most painterly of printing techniques, was largely absent from the artist's landscape of 1950s America. In his subsequent prints at her studio ULAE, Johns' subjects included lithographs of banal symbols such as targets, coat hangers, flags and numerals, as well as his own hand. As a result of their working relationship by the close of the decade, Johns masterfully understood the unique properties of lithography, combining the immediacy of drawing on the lithographic stone with the ability to continually rework the image or even recycle the image into the next composition.
A passionate sales pitch from master printer Ken Tyler inspired Johns to travel to the Gemini G.E.L. workshop in 1969. Johns had a clear plan in mind when he arrived to the Los Angeles studio, to employ Tyler's famous lithographic large stones and their "gorgeous" surfaces. The existence of the stones themselves in 1969 was somewhat of a miracle in its own right, as Tyler had rescued them from a building site via an old Volkswagen.
The artist personally selected ten of these stones and created a series of numerals from 0-9, to be printed in black resulting in his Black Numerals Series. The three-foot stencils from these numbers were over twice the height of his earlier 0-9 portfolios published at ULAE. Johns then turned his attention to printing a colored series of numerals from the same stones, continuing his constant drive to renew and reinvent from his existing visual language. This time the surface was inked with rainbow rolls- an effect achieved when the stone was inked with a roller loaded with several colored pigments at the same time. In a moment of innovation driven out of need so typical of Ken Tyler, he developed a special automatic inking machine to achieve the tonality on the scale desired by the artist. The subsequent sumptuous images are his Color Numerals Series seen here, considered his most visually arresting exploration of the numeral subject in printed form. Reworking a series of motifs is particularly suited to printmaking, which naturally lends itself to exploring variations. In these numeral prints Johns manipulated the representation of the figures using order--the numerals were either presented consecutively or layered into a single image. The role of color in this set further creates patterns and order, mimicking the numeral order of his subject. Finally, Johns also adds familiar iconographic symbols within his numerals, most famously in his Figure 7 where Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is inserted. Similar to Marcel Duchamp's use of Da Vinci's iconic image as a readymade icon in L.H.O.O.Q., in his use of the image Johns implies that she is as recognizable as the numerals themselves, another familiar cipher to be repeated and used such as a target, flag or set of numbers.
The result of this tremendous effort was immediately lauded as a landmark in the history of 20th Century printmaking. Richard Field described the set as "bench-marks in the history of lithographic expression", while Charlie Ritt the printer for the set described the product as "really magical". Perhaps the best description of the set is from Ken Tyler himself: "The range of tonality that a Johns drawn stone gets is incredible; and these are not reworked at all, so that you have a fresh quality about his work Let's face it he's one of the greatest lithographers of all time, and he is, therefore, one of the hardest to print for because he incorporates so many subtleties in his prints his stones yield the last ounce of blood lithography has to yield" At once simple and complex, the nature of these images is both testament to Johns masterful use of the print medium in his own practice and his profound importance within the history of lithography.
A passionate sales pitch from master printer Ken Tyler inspired Johns to travel to the Gemini G.E.L. workshop in 1969. Johns had a clear plan in mind when he arrived to the Los Angeles studio, to employ Tyler's famous lithographic large stones and their "gorgeous" surfaces. The existence of the stones themselves in 1969 was somewhat of a miracle in its own right, as Tyler had rescued them from a building site via an old Volkswagen.
The artist personally selected ten of these stones and created a series of numerals from 0-9, to be printed in black resulting in his Black Numerals Series. The three-foot stencils from these numbers were over twice the height of his earlier 0-9 portfolios published at ULAE. Johns then turned his attention to printing a colored series of numerals from the same stones, continuing his constant drive to renew and reinvent from his existing visual language. This time the surface was inked with rainbow rolls- an effect achieved when the stone was inked with a roller loaded with several colored pigments at the same time. In a moment of innovation driven out of need so typical of Ken Tyler, he developed a special automatic inking machine to achieve the tonality on the scale desired by the artist. The subsequent sumptuous images are his Color Numerals Series seen here, considered his most visually arresting exploration of the numeral subject in printed form. Reworking a series of motifs is particularly suited to printmaking, which naturally lends itself to exploring variations. In these numeral prints Johns manipulated the representation of the figures using order--the numerals were either presented consecutively or layered into a single image. The role of color in this set further creates patterns and order, mimicking the numeral order of his subject. Finally, Johns also adds familiar iconographic symbols within his numerals, most famously in his Figure 7 where Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is inserted. Similar to Marcel Duchamp's use of Da Vinci's iconic image as a readymade icon in L.H.O.O.Q., in his use of the image Johns implies that she is as recognizable as the numerals themselves, another familiar cipher to be repeated and used such as a target, flag or set of numbers.
The result of this tremendous effort was immediately lauded as a landmark in the history of 20th Century printmaking. Richard Field described the set as "bench-marks in the history of lithographic expression", while Charlie Ritt the printer for the set described the product as "really magical". Perhaps the best description of the set is from Ken Tyler himself: "The range of tonality that a Johns drawn stone gets is incredible; and these are not reworked at all, so that you have a fresh quality about his work Let's face it he's one of the greatest lithographers of all time, and he is, therefore, one of the hardest to print for because he incorporates so many subtleties in his prints his stones yield the last ounce of blood lithography has to yield" At once simple and complex, the nature of these images is both testament to Johns masterful use of the print medium in his own practice and his profound importance within the history of lithography.