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Lot Essay
Introduced to the silkscreen by Andy Warhol in 1960, Johns was initially uncertain as to whether it would suit his work: a process designed to generate broad areas of flat, single-tone color was not an obvious choice for an artist whose compositions regularly engaged a juxtaposition between transparency and opacity. However, by 1974, Johns was deploying it with such technical expertise that he was able to convey certain painterly nuances and subtle complexities that were out of reach of even his hand-painted compositions.
With the help of master printer Hiroshi Kawanishi at Simca Artist Prints, Inc., Johns devised a series of screens used in stages that allowed him to create a richness and depth of color rarely seen in printed works. ‘By adding a rather large number of screens and having the stencil openings follow the shapes of brushstrokes,’ the artist explained, ‘I have tried to achieve a different type of complexity, one in which the eye no longer focuses on the flatness of the colors and the sharpness of the edges. Of course, this may constitute an abuse of the medium, of its true nature.’
Images of targets have been central motifs in Johns’ work throughout his career beginning in the 1950s. The image in the present lot is closely related to iconic earlier paintings such as Target with Four Faces from 1955 (see here). Johns was able to translate the painterly effect into the printed medium through a complex process of dripping and layering ink, which allowed for subtle variations of opacity and translucency. As a result, the screenprint medium was well-suited to John’s approach which valued process and repetition. As the artist once claimed, "Take an object / Do something to it / Do something else to it."
With the help of master printer Hiroshi Kawanishi at Simca Artist Prints, Inc., Johns devised a series of screens used in stages that allowed him to create a richness and depth of color rarely seen in printed works. ‘By adding a rather large number of screens and having the stencil openings follow the shapes of brushstrokes,’ the artist explained, ‘I have tried to achieve a different type of complexity, one in which the eye no longer focuses on the flatness of the colors and the sharpness of the edges. Of course, this may constitute an abuse of the medium, of its true nature.’
Images of targets have been central motifs in Johns’ work throughout his career beginning in the 1950s. The image in the present lot is closely related to iconic earlier paintings such as Target with Four Faces from 1955 (see here). Johns was able to translate the painterly effect into the printed medium through a complex process of dripping and layering ink, which allowed for subtle variations of opacity and translucency. As a result, the screenprint medium was well-suited to John’s approach which valued process and repetition. As the artist once claimed, "Take an object / Do something to it / Do something else to it."