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Photos: The Blockbuster Jasper Johns Exhibition Opens At the Whitney
By
Scott Lynch
Published Sep 24, 2021
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By
Scott Lynch
Published Sep 24, 2021
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Autumn in New York City always means at least one big name blockbuster museum show, and this year that honor goes to the Whitney, where some 250 works by Jasper Johns take up residence in the sprawling galleries on the fifth floor. It's a spectacular exhibition, spanning the artist's 65-year career and featuring many of his most iconic works as well as rare pieces on public view here for the first time.
The show is called Mind/Mirror, and the original plan was to open it last year, in time for the artist's 90th birthday, but the pandemic hit and the show got delayed. Johns, now 91 and still actively working in his Connecticut studio, didn't seem to mind the delay—in fact, when the NY Times asked him about the exhibition, his only reply was, “I don’t want to be quoted. These are not my ideas. The show is not my idea.”
"Three Flags"
Be that as it may, fans of Johns's work will find a lot to be happy about here. Included among the paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures are "Three Flags," which was also the first piece of work Johns ever showed at the Whitney, at the Annual in 1959; several dimensional pieces which could almost be considered assemblages, like the enormous, brightly-colored "According to What;" and the complete series of his seventeen Savarin monotypes, completed in 1982 and brilliantly working through the artist's obsession with "repetition and difference."
Despite its riches, Mind/Mirror at the Whitney is really only half the story. Over at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, there are about 250 additional works by Johns, the two huge exhibitions running simultaneously and set up as mirror images of each other. But even if you can't make it to Philly, the Whitney show definitely stands on its own.
Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror at the Whitney opens today for members, and on Thursday, September 30, to the general public. Museum admission is $25 for adults, and advanced, timed-entry tickets are "strongly encouraged."
Tagged
the whitney
retrospective
jasper johns
art
Scott Lynch
Photojournalist, food writer, preschool receptionist. Love NYC.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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