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拍品专文
Though it would appear to be very different from Jasper Johns' early series of flags, targets, and numbers, Scent’s bundles of parallel markings have the same Duchampian implications of perceptual paradox: with its strong patterning and optically active color contrasts, the all-over design does not lie flat but evokes a shallow, oscillating space. First articulated in Johns’ works in the left-hand panel of a four-panel painting of 1972 and the lithographs known as Four Panels from Untitled of the same year, the hatching motif has subsequently appeared in several paintings and prints.
As an amplification of ideas set forth in the 1973 painting of the same name, Scent presents a seemingly random mosaic of markings that is actually an intricate pattern of visual repeats based upon a predetermined plan. With intimations of detective stories and hidden clues, the title of the print invites the viewer to decipher Johns’ compositional Strategy of repetitions and inversions. The optical activity of patterns and colors function like camouflage imposed to make the act of deciphering more difficult. As always with Johns, the issue here is one of problems of perception, of the relationship of eye and intellect.
Although it is by no means obvious at first glance, the print consists of three vertical panels created by means of three contrasting graphic techniques. Upon closer scrutiny, the viewer discovers the subtle nuances of surface that distinguish the lithographic, linocut, and woodcut panels separated by discreet vertical seams. The lithographic wash has a fluid quality that contrasts with the somewhat harsher, flatter, and more vivid hues of the linocut. In the third panel the fine-grained texture of the wood veneer adds depth and substance to the colors. Such almost subliminal variations in technique draw our attention to the sensuous surface qualities of Scent and add to the complexity of deciphering It.
Nancy Spector, The Modern Art of the Print: Selections from the Collection of Lois and Michael Torf, p. 90
As an amplification of ideas set forth in the 1973 painting of the same name, Scent presents a seemingly random mosaic of markings that is actually an intricate pattern of visual repeats based upon a predetermined plan. With intimations of detective stories and hidden clues, the title of the print invites the viewer to decipher Johns’ compositional Strategy of repetitions and inversions. The optical activity of patterns and colors function like camouflage imposed to make the act of deciphering more difficult. As always with Johns, the issue here is one of problems of perception, of the relationship of eye and intellect.
Although it is by no means obvious at first glance, the print consists of three vertical panels created by means of three contrasting graphic techniques. Upon closer scrutiny, the viewer discovers the subtle nuances of surface that distinguish the lithographic, linocut, and woodcut panels separated by discreet vertical seams. The lithographic wash has a fluid quality that contrasts with the somewhat harsher, flatter, and more vivid hues of the linocut. In the third panel the fine-grained texture of the wood veneer adds depth and substance to the colors. Such almost subliminal variations in technique draw our attention to the sensuous surface qualities of Scent and add to the complexity of deciphering It.
Nancy Spector, The Modern Art of the Print: Selections from the Collection of Lois and Michael Torf, p. 90