THE PROVOCATION OF JASPER JOHNS: PUSHING THE REPRESENTATIONAL LIMITS OF PICTORIAL EXPRESSION

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between visuality and verbal language in the works of Jasper Johns roughly between the period of 1955-1965. Works such as Numbers in Colors (1958-59), Gray Alphabets (1956), False Start (1959), Jubilee (1959), By the Sea (1961), Fool's House (1962), Map (1961), The Critic Sees (1961), Voice (1964-67), Voice 2 (1982), Light Bulb (1958) and Watchman (1964) provide us with fertile ground to explore issues pertinent to the limits of pictorial expression by revealing how visual and verbal spaces are intricately interwoven. However, the relationship in between also embeds a great deal of tension hosting constant interruption and violation. For a fair evaluation of any visual artwork, we end up having to suspend our habitual ways of looking and realize the complexity of the basic task of looking. These works challenge our vision by making us question the diverse experience of looking (seeing, beholding, saluting, reading, counting, studying, memorizing, spying, voyeurizing, gazing etc.). The paper claims that what grants Johns' art its provocative power is the realization that the realm of the visual is never a pure space but is constantly influenced by verbal and other senses.