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Jasper Johns
U.S.,
b. 1930
Corpse and Mirror , 1976
Lithograph
41 x 49 in.
Purchase with Funds from the Jerome Westheimer Acquisitions
Fund, 1985 |
In the 1960s, Jasper Johns, one of the
most celebrated and influential living artists, broke with tradition
and began devoting himself equally to painting and printmaking.
His works on paper, which frequently echo the imagery and themes
of his paintings, continue to represent an important component of
his work.
Like the 1974 paintings of the same title, the lithograph Corpse
and Mirror employs crosshatching, a drawing technique that uses
sets of intersecting parallel lines to shade an object. In this
instance, Johns combines the crosshatch with his familiar compositional
framework of the double image, requiring the viewer's close inspection
to discern the subtle differences between the two parts. The title
alludes to the Surrealist method of making what was referred to
as "an exquisite corpse," with several artists and poets
contributing to a single work, each starting with just an edge of
what had been drawn by the previous person.
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