I Want to Keep Doing What I am Doing Now

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM: BEYOND THE FIRST GENERATION

KU: Today in American contemporary art there are many trends, but I would like to ask you what kind of bridge do you think exists between the visual world created by the so-called Pop artists like you and Rauschenberg in the 1960s and the first generation of American artists like Pollock, Newman, and Rothko?

JJ: I don’t think I have a direct relationship with the first generation of Abstract Expressionism. And I don’t think that the actual message that was present in the work of the first generation, appeared in our work in a modified form.
Even among artists of our generation, there are many who did works that follow the flow of painters of the so-called first generation like Rothko, Pollock, and Newman, but often, no matter what, their work ended up looking too similar to that of the first generation and not very original, because either their background ideas or their style were, in a certain way, borrowed.
There certainly was an audience that supported artists who had been strongly influenced by the first generation. What I mean is that America wanted more and more of what was created by the first generation. Therefore, even works that had little originality, to a certain extent, were popular, but that is when I think we appeared on the scene. We brought something different from the first generation of Rothko, Pollock, and Newman, and conversely, I think we were supported precisely for this reason.

KU: Looking back now, the influence of Barnett Newman’s work is quite strong. If you go now to MoMA, you see the European art movements of the first half of the twentieth century, and then, to break away from them, there is Pollock’s dripping and Barnett Newman’s Vir Heroicus Sublimis. These works generate a fundamentally different impression on us. One can clearly see that Pollock and Newman created a new trend in contemporary art in America. That trend continues up to this day and has now become mainstream, and I can see that, in a way, their ideas have been inherited by the young generation of today, though we must still examine the quality of those ideas. What are your thoughts on that?

JJ: First of all, MoMA is currently rehanging its collection. (Laugh). In any case, Newman is a very important figure.

KU: What I meant to say is that the work of artists today -- I don’t know if I should mention any names here, but for example, Walter de Maria’s installations, Richard Serra, and Dan Flavin and, close to us, On Kawara’s work consisting only of dates -- the works of these artists completely nullify the contents of their expressions and create only the frameworks for them. Work like this is now the mainstream. This created the context to elevate the first generation of artists like Pollock and Newman to the status of masters. And now, from our point of view, it looks that Jasper’s work seems to take a distance from that of the younger generation of contemporary American artists…

JJ: I feel it is very difficult to connect my work to an art movement, in general. Because I don’t work looking at what other people do, basically I paint according to myself. It is not that I am ignoring them, of course not, and it may happen that I use as feedback for my work, things that I felt or I reacted to when looking at works that you are calling the mainstream; however, I don’t understand where your definition of “mainstream” comes from. In other words, does something become mainstream based on the number of times it is on view in galleries or exhibitions, or somehow because of the atmosphere of the times?
Because what forms that mainstream is so vague, it is difficult defining my position toward it, and in addition, given that I don’t clearly understand where that mainstream exists, it is difficult to even answer how I relate to it.

KU: Yes, of course. I say of course because I feel strongly that this is the time we have to create by ourselves our own framework of expression. And we have to do it by ourselves, even if it is not a unique circumstance of Japan.
Because until now America had the leadership in contemporary art, how could we get involved in it, what ideas could we bring? This was our general way of thinking. But instead of this, I think that we must create a new framework completely opposing concepts such as the nothingness of content or the sublimation of content. I am now thinking that your work, that currently may appear to be outside of the mainstream, once again could become a starting point.

JJ: Yes, if we talk about making a framework, when I was young, I also wanted to establish a new framework, and, if you ask me what I was aiming to do in those days, I wanted to do something that didn’t exist yet, that other painters were not doing. If looking at a work that I had done, I saw any element that reminded me even a little bit of the work of another artist, I would throw it away without thinking twice and redo something different.
However, if it becomes a matter of extending this to include the entire culture, I mean, if we try to talk about making a framework that keeps into consideration the entire culture, I don’t know if I have any suggestions to offer.

KU: It feels like we are asked to enter history once again. That is why I now became extremely critical toward contemporary American art. Of course, I say this because I was there myself, I grew up within that logic.

JJ: I am wondering if I relate to your feeling toward Abstract Expressionism. Because until Ab-Ex in America there was no international art. And, maybe, the Ab-Ex artists shared the same state of mind with the Japanese artists you mentioned? In other words, Americans of the first generation tried to react to the avant-garde movements of Europe. Basically, because America until then was not recognized as a place for international art, the artists of Ab-Ex tried to make it become one, precisely like the artists in Japan are trying to make it in Japan now….

KU: Even in 1955, in your series of “Targets,” you addressed a subject similar to what you did with “Skin.” In Target with Four Faces, rather than putting eyes above the “Target,” you put mouths and noses. In other words, beyond sight, you dealt with the five senses

JJ: In a book that I am reading now, a book by an art critic who is writing about my work, it is written something similar to what you are saying, but this is not something I personally ever paid any attention to. In that book, the art critic says that there is no human head in this work for the same reason you mentioned.
If you ask me, there are no eyes in the work simply because, as a practical matter, I couldn’t put plaster above an eyeball and make a mold of it. (Laughs).

KU: I believe that the “Target” came to be a symbolic expression, as we can also say for “Skin.” A “Target” is something for the eyes. However, you don’t make targets to look at with eyes, you make targets to touch, you make targets that we can perceive with the body. Don’t you think? Basically, I feel that when you create texture, you come to make work that moves from the eye to a more intuitive, or more physical, experience.

JJ: I still intend to work using both overlaying and assembling. Overlaying is no longer as evident as before. Therefore, while I am still using overlaying, since the way I do it has changed, because of this, it may be perceived as you said, that there is a shift toward assembling. Lately, I have been doing tracings of other artists’ work (Note: Picasso, Munch, Grunewald) and incorporating them in my work, and for this I definitively use overlaying. I hope people discover the various layered effects throughout these works.

 

KU: Earlier on, I asked why you did overlays in the 1950s and 1960s, and I think one reason is that you aimed to avoid subjective expression.
A 5 that is disappearing, a rough 5, a 5 that is melting away… but, in its complexity this is a 5, and you position yourself in a place in which without calling it subjectively as the 5 that is disappearing, you describe the complexity of its appearance. However, when it comes to assembling or to tracing and quoting various things in these arrangements, am I correct in saying that the relation between the subject and the thing that becomes the motif shift quite a lot, particularly the position of the subject, right? 

 

JJ: That is right.

 

KU: I would like to ask you if a certain awareness to combine everything you have done up until now is starting to emerge.

 

JJ: I think it was already the case. (Laughs). When I make a work, I always aim to do something different from the work I have done until then. And maybe this is what generates in my work a sense of coherence or lack of coherence.

 

KU: It is interesting that it has both aspects. When you talk about combining elements, you may refer to two ways of thinking: one is integrating what you have done until now, and the other one is integrating the ideas and way of seeing of many people from an art historical standpoint, like in the tracing of Grunewald and Picasso you have used in recent works. I believe both of these aspects are present… 

 

JJ: Maybe so. Of course, it is a combination of elements from my own work and from the work of other artists of the past, but also of various elements from the outside world at the time in which I am living. Because of this, it is a combination of abstract and figurative things. When I deal with things outside me, there is a coherence even in the lack of coherence which comes to refresh me.

 

KU: Are you familiar with the Czech writer Milan Kundera?

 

JJ: I have read his work.

 

KU: In Kundera’s work, there are texts in which the clock is used as a metaphor. The image of “progress” is associated with the moving of the hands of the clock, and the image of the total “space” is associated with the face of the clock, and he uses expressions like “remaking the face of the clock” or “moving the hands.” This metaphor is interesting, and if we go back to the conversation we had at the beginning, I feel that American Abstract Expressionism is the force that wanted to move the hands of the clock, and, in so doing, American contemporary art became the mainstream. I think that your recent work has changed in the direction of remaking the face of the clock, but what do you think?

 

JJ: I am not sure if I connect to the clock metaphor. While I have never clearly painted a clock, I have often been using motifs that have associations with clocks. In the 1950s, I once tried to incorporate a clock in my work. However, it wasn’t a clock that you could see, you could simply hear the ticking. But I ended up destroying it.

 

KU: This is the first time I am hearing about it. That is interesting. I was hoping to talk about dealing with real “time” using the face of the clock, but let’s save that for another time.

 

JJ: Yes, I think so too! (Laughs).

 

 

 

I HAVE NO PLAN WHATSOEVER

 

KU: I would like to hear a little bit about Jasper Johns’s current work and life.

 

JJ: I work almost all day long… or I intend to. But I don’t know if this is of interest to other people. I live between New York and Saint Martin, in the Caribbean. I used to go to Paris and to Los Angeles to do prints, but that was about ten years ago, I don’t do it anymore. Sometimes I do prints in New York.

 

KU: I moved my studio to the countryside recently. You moved to work in the countryside quite early, to Stony Point (Note: a suburb of New York), and now you have a studio on the island of Saint Martin. What do you think about working away from the city?

 

JJ: It doesn’t make much of a difference for me, except maybe that the phone doesn’t ring. That’s about it. It is a place where the light is beautiful, but this is not something particularly unusual either. On the island, there is no so-called “intellectual life,” and if there is something you want to do, you need to bring it with you.

 

KU: When you are an artist, it doesn’t mean that because you want to make a work you are able to do it, I think that in order to be able to work, you compete with many social requests, with social pressure; and I think that this force that pushes me forward has decreased compared to the 1950s and 1960s. How do you feel about this kind of social force?

 

JJ: The social environment, in some cases, can be encouraging, but it can also be disheartening.

 

KU: In the past five or six years we have witnessed some very big historical developments, and in the political sphere, we have entered a turbulent time as well. Currently, we are in a situation of great upheaval. Though the art world may not directly be involved in this, what do you think about this, what do you feel?

 

JJ: Of course, in some ways I have been influenced by the historical and political changes of the past few years. Even in the art world of New York City alone, which is relatively small, things have changed quite a bit in the last ten years. People change as they get older, and so does their way to relate to things and their attitude toward them. Don’t you think so?

 

KU: Yes, I think so.

 

JJ: Regarding the current situation, I think this is a time that we feel unable to grasp it in its entirety. From here, what emerges are fragments, fragmentation, and, if you ask about this fragmentation, concretely, and in what shape it appears in my work, speaking for myself, I would not be able to say it clearly.

 

KU: As of right now, a work with a sense of totality is prone to go in the direction of eliminating the subject. In other words, the more we move toward a world without subject, this gives us the optical illusion of one perfect totality, and it starts to feel like that. I have a strong impression that a work with a sense of totality in contemporary art is a work in which human beings do not have a presence. I feel that way. That is why, since the only work I can do is fragment-like work, I think that I have to once more redefine the position of those fragments. Is that even possible?

 

JJ: Indeed, I am doing exactly the same thing, because fragments have become the reality. This is what I have always been doing, dealing with the part and the whole or, for example, how one thing can be seen completely as another thing. So, if you think that this is the present situation, on this point, your opinion overlaps with mine.

 

KU: We are running out of time, but lastly, Jasper, I would like you to talk a little bit about your vision for the future. Do you have any projects, or maybe just a feeling of the type of work you would like to do from now on?

 

JJ: I have no plan whatsoever. I just want to keep doing what I am doing now. I will send you photos of my work. That is the best way. (Laughs).

 

KU: Yes, sure but... (Laughs). As for the development of my work from now on… I take it a piece at a time.

 

JJ: I don’t understand that. Recently, I started to have a strong feeling that the work I was doing was going to be my last one. But even if this is what I thought, the only certainty I had is that this will not happen! (Laughs.)

 

KU: Well, thank you very much for your time.