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This article was first published in the Jewish Museum catalog of the work of Jasper Johns early in 1964. I began work on it in September 1963. I searched for a way of writing which would relate somehow to the canvases and personality of the painter. The absence of unpainted space in most of his work and, what seemed to me, an enigmatic aura of his personality produced a problem, one which I was determined to solve and which for five months occupied and fascinated me. As a matter of fact, it still does. Johns more than any other painter has provoked large numbers of people to the use of faculties they would not otherwise have employed. I needed help. I got this from Lois Long and Merce Cunningham, close friends of mine and of Jasper Johns. They gave this help first in conversation, second in patient reading and discussion of my writing as it proceeded. After giving up plans for a text which involved elaborate use of chance operations with respect to type faces, size of type, superimpositions of type, collage of texts previously written about Johns by other critics, I settled on the plan of making use—as described in the note in this volume precedingzyxwvu Rhythm Etc.—of my Cartridge Music. However, I took the empty spaces which developed from that way of writing as spaces to be filled in with further writing. The paragraphs and paragraph signs resulted from chance operations. Johns and Rauschenberg, Cunningham and Tudor have been and continue to be artists of deep significance for me. They have all brought about changes in my work. I do not know whether I will ever fulfill a project I've had now for several years: to make a correspondence between these four and the seasons: David Tudor would be spring; Johns, summer; Cunningham, fall; Robert Rauschenberg, winter (creation, preservation, destruction, quiescence). Such a project would involve me in extending the following text on Jasper Johns, so that it would be four times as long as it is, a length relative in my mind to summer and its quality of keeping things around. JASPER JOHNS: STORIES AND IDEAS Passages in italics are quotations from Jasper Johns found in his notebooks and published statements. On the porch at Edisto. Henry's records filling the air with Rock 'n' Roll. I said I couldn't understand what the singer was saying. Johns (laughing): That's because you don't listen. zyxwvut 73 Beginning with a flag that has no space around it, that has the same size as the painting, we see that it is not a paintingzyxwvu of a flag. The roles are reversed: beginning with the flag, a painting was made. Beginning, that is, with structure, the division of the whole into parts corresponding to the parts of a flag, a painting was made which both obscures and clarifies the underlying structure. A precedent is in poetry, the sonnet: by means of language, caesurae, iambic pentameter, license and rhymes to obscure and clarify the grand division of the fourteen lines into Ight and six. The sonnet and the United States flag during that period of history when there were forty-eight states? These are houses, Shakespeare in one, Johns in the other, each spending some of his time living. % I thought he was doing three things (five things he was doing escaped my notice). He keeps himself informed about what's going on particularly in the world of art. This is done by reading magazines, visiting galleries and studios, answering the telephone , conversing with friends. If a book is brought to his attention that he has reason to believe is interesting, he gets it and reads it (Wittgenstein, Nabokov, McLuhan). If it comes to his notice that someone else had one of his ideas before he did, he makes a mental or actual note not to proceed with his plan. (On the other hand, the casual remark of a friend can serve to change a painting essentially.) There are various ways to improve one's chess game. One is to take back a move when it becomes clear that it was a bad one. Another is to accept the consequences, devastating as they are. Johns chooses the latter even when the former is offered. Say he has a disagreement with others; he examines the situation and comes to a moral decision. He then proceeds, if to an impasse, to an impasse. When all else fails (and...

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