Jasper Johns at The Broad

Jasper Johns, now an icon among late 20th century artists, had one of his first museum exhibitions at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1965. Though originated in New York, it was brought west by Walter Hopps, then curator and director of PAM. That show was significant for any number of artists wanting to learn more about his paintings, which occasionally featured simple words, Ed Ruscha in particular.

Johns, a serious and self-effacing young man raised mostly in South Carolina, was the improbable meteor crashing into the center of Manhattan in the late 1950s. The question was simple but profound: how does an artist paint around or through the edifice of what was called The New York School: Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Klein.

Jasper Johns, Fool’s House, 1961–62. Oil on canvas with broom, sculptural towel, stretcher and cup, 182.9 x 92.5 x 11.4 cm. Private collection.Art © Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

To anyone mildly familiar with contemporary art, the early paintings are well known. Nonetheless, their impact is undiminished. Work that can appear to be simple and graphic in reproduction consists of carefully arranged colors in brushstrokes that are simultaneously free and disciplined.

This is not to say that every picture in the show is wonderful but one can only be amazed by the thoroughness and thoughtfulness. I happened to see a series simply called “Gray” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2009 and I can assure you that it was one of the most memorable shows for me. Seeing some of those paintings in the show at The Broad rekindled my passion for them. In the case of Johns, gray is more than just black and white, it is an amalgam of colors. It refers to mist and shadow and imprecision, the matters of poetry.

From the late 1990s, Johns explored the “catenary,” draping a simple white string from one edge of a painting to the other. Inexplicably, they embody fleeting and ineffable emotions, something to do with fragility, mortality and the precariousness of life. It was in 2006, late in his career, that he uttered the words that became the title of this show: “One hopes for something resembling truth, some sense of life, even of grace, to flicker, at least, in the work.”

through May 13, 2018.