Art Review: Jasper Johns Show Fizzles

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror is the new and overdue retrospective of the artist who is as sui generis as artists come, a pivot for American art in the 1950s and early ’60s, and, at 91, still at work. At the Whitney Museum of American Art, where I saw it, Mind/Mirror is close to 250 objects, in numbers the biggest exhibition I can remember, and deadening. A parallel retrospective, slimmer at 225 works of art, runs concurrently at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This is a new kind of crazy, but more on that later.

Art, for Johns, is a means to experience an object. The object itself, to him, is usually irrelevant. Whether they’re flags, targets, numbers, coffee cans, crosshatches, or beer cans, he’s after something else, but what? Johns has been famous since the 1950s but an enigma, and now a hermit. He’ll offer insights into his own work that don’t get much more explicit than “Oh, it’s what I was thinking.” This raises questions the Whitney doesn’t answer. Why does Johns matter? Why should we care? Does his art make us think? I’m tempted to suggest, with big qualifications, that he does, we should, and, more or less, no.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror is the new and overdue retrospective of the artist who is as sui generis as artists come, a pivot for American art in the 1950s and early ’60s, and, at 91, still at work. At the Whitney Museum of American Art, where I saw it, Mind/Mirror is close to 250 objects, in numbers the biggest exhibition I can remember, and deadening. A parallel retrospective, slimmer at 225 works of art, runs concurrently at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This is a new kind of crazy, but more on that later.

Art, for Johns, is a means to experience an object. The object itself, to him, is usually irrelevant. Whether they’re flags, targets, numbers, coffee cans, crosshatches, or beer cans, he’s after something else, but what? Johns has been famous since the 1950s but an enigma, and now a hermit. He’ll offer insights into his own work that don’t get much more explicit than “Oh, it’s what I was thinking.” This raises questions the Whitney doesn’t answer. Why does Johns matter? Why should we care? Does his art make us think? I’m tempted to suggest, with big qualifications, that he does, we should, and, more or less, no.