| Maker(s): | Johns, Jasper
| | Culture: | American (1930- )
| | Title: | Land's End
| | Date Made: | 1979
| | Type: | Print
| | Materials: | Lithograph on Kurotani handmade paper
| | Measurements: | Frame: 57 1/8 in x 40 1/2 in x 1 5/8 in; 145.1 cm x 102.9 cm x 4.1 cm; Mount: 56 15/16 x 39 1/4 in; 144.6 x 99.7 cm; Sheet: 52 x 36 1/4 in; 132.1 x 92.1 cm
| | Narrative Inscription: | SIGNATURE/BLIND STAMPS/DATE: front, lwr. r. (graphite): J. Johns © [Gemini symbol] '79; TITLE: recto, lwr. l. (watermark): LAND'S END; EDITION: front, lwr. l. (graphtie): 49/70; PRINTER"S STAMPS: verso, lwr. l. (grey ink stamp): Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles STONY JOHNS, INC.; ALPHANUMERIC: verso, lwr. L. (graphite): JJ78-845
| | Accession Number: | UM 1986.4
| | Credit Line: | Gift of Mrs. Lois Beurman Torf (Class of 1946) and Mr. Michael K. Torf
| | Museum Collection: | University Museum of Contemporary Art at UMASS Amherst
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Description:
Black and white composition with a dark abstract back ground. The words RED, YELLOW and BLUE are printed from top to bottom down the center. Some of the text is repeated in outlines with shadows with the letters reversed. The text has the appearance of being stenciled. A hand with palm facing out on top of a spring-like shape extends from the lower left. A lighthouse shape with a half circle "light" radiating from its top emerges from the top right side. A rectange with a downward facing arrow is below the light house.
Label Text:
2006 Curatorial Fellowship Exhibition: Word and Image
Typical of his Neo-Dada sensibility, Jasper Johns’ Land’s End (1979) challenges the functionality of words as signs, replacing their raison d’être with a more nonsensical role. The lithograph features the words “Red,” “Yellow,” and “Blue” boldly stenciled across its surface. The text is devoid of meaning here, though, as they consist of and inhabit a colorless field of black, white, and grey. These basic signifiers are understood universally, taught to children as concrete truths. Using them arbitrarily, Johns robs them of their ingrained meaning and questions the illogical nature of language. Visually echoed by its own mirror image, the text does not refer to the colors it names, but rather, directs attention back in toward itself as an entity. Their stenciled forms and lack of color create an impersonality and conceptual removal of the artist’s hand, which contradicts the visual presence of a hand in center of the print’s composition, as well as the overall, gestural quality of the surface. The half target, one of Johns’ trademark images, reinforces the flatness of the picture plane and further plays with the concept of object as sign.
Lisa Amato
Tags:
text; black and white; abstract; hands; arrows Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=UM+1986.4 |
