![]() Do something else to it.” Within the structured lattice of squares, Johns has modulated the saturation of both ink and crayon in each number, so that the final composition of the cobblestoned numbers is orderly and variegated, invariable yet variable. Each number undergoes several transformations, demonstrating Johns’ ambition to record as many iterations of a predetermined pattern of an image, calling to mind his famous self-instruction from an early workbook: “Take an object. The final ten figures in the last row mirror the top row in a harmonious conclusion, the repetitive exercise fully exhausted. ![]() The top left corner of the grid remains blank, so that each number shifts position as the rows progress. In the present work, however, each small figure contributes to a larger whole, the series of numbers repeating itself eleven times in an almost meditative rhythm. ![]() Each distinct module presents a neatly demarcated numeral from 0 to 9. Eleven rows of evenly sized rectangles stack across this work on paper in eleven orderly columns, creating a complex and prescribed grid of 121 boxes in various gray tones. Unlike the output of his Abstract Expressionist contemporaries, who embraced intuition and spontaneity, Johns’ corpus, and the present work in particular, reveals a prescribed and premeditated approach. This additional layer of paper creates a richly textured surface that brings to the fore Johns’ artistic process and singular goal of refreshing and challenging ‘things the mind already knows.’ This drawing is unique in that Johns drew the image onto Japanese paper, leaving a thin margin at the edges of the composition, then carefully mounted it onto Torinoko paper, an elegant material for printmaking and drawing. A regimented ink and crayon drawing, the present work is a rare large-scale work from the Numbers series, of which many painted, drawn, encaustic and sculpmetal versions reside in museum collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The works comprising the final series 0 through 9 are single images in which the numbers have been superimposed onto one another, creating a cacophonous energy that nevertheless hints at the edges and shapes of the numbers. The Figures series comprises single numbers 0 - 9 presents the numerals in an abbreviated grid, either together or as separate works to be hung together in a grid format. By 1960, Johns had devised four discrete formats for investigating the infinite variations of these numerals: Figures, Numbers, 0 - 9 and 0 through 9. Numerals first appeared in Jasper Johns’ work in Construction with Toy Piano from 1954, and would remain a central motif of the artist’s works for decades to come indeed, he has explored the form of numbers more than any other subject or series in his career. ![]() From flags to targets to maps, Johns’s output integrates abstraction with representation and brings to the fore the viewer’s agency in perceiving these everyday and commonplace signs. The astoundingly prolific career of Jasper Johns constitutes an intense fascination with semiotics and the uncertain status of an object and its literal representation. His astounding Numbers, from 2006, is a riveting expression of one of his most often referenced subjects in his most favored gray scale palette.
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