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For Jasper Johns, Gray Matters

Monochromatic Met show opens to raves

By Jason Farago,  Newser Staff

Posted Feb 8, 2008 1:56 PM CST
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(Newser) – Visitors to the major Jasper Johns exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York might find the art a bit colorless. But that's precisely the point: The renowned American artist has filled the galleries with 119 paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures executed in shades of gray. The nearly monochromatic show is "unexpectedly rich" but also "weirdly obsessive," writes Bloomberg critic Linda Yablonsky.

Jasper Johns: Gray, organized by the Art Institute of Chicago, investigates the artist's  fascination with the non-color, which for him is more than a midpoint between white and black. While "unavoidably somber," gray becomes a tool "to neutralize subjective associations" and render the familiar abstract. A few shots of color punctuate the show: It includes False Start, the riotous 1959 painting David Geffen sold to a Chicago financier for $80 million.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the Jasper Johns: Gray exhibit is up.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the "Jasper Johns: Gray" exhibit is up.   ((c) Go Card USA)
This undated photo released by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles shows the Jasper Johns painting Map, 1962, which is currently showing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in the exhibit Jasper Johns: Gray
This undated photo released by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles shows the Jasper Johns painting "Map, 1962," which is currently showing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in the...   (Associated Press)
This undated photo released by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York shows the Jasper Johns painting Jubilee, 1959, which is currently showing at the Met in New York in the Jasper Johns: Gray exhibit.
This undated photo released by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York shows the Jasper Johns painting "Jubilee, 1959," which is currently showing at the Met in New York in the "Jasper Johns: Gray"...   (Associated Press)
This undated photo released by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York shows the Jasper Johns painting False Start, 1959, which is currently showing at the Met in New York in an exhibit titled Jasper Johns: Gray.
This undated photo released by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York shows the Jasper Johns painting "False Start, 1959," which is currently showing at the Met in New York in an exhibit titled "Jasper...   (Associated Press)
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Other reviews of the Johns show

Gray has never looked so colorful
Associated Press

A shadow retrospective of a career within a career
New York Times

Gray is the new black (inevitably)
Star-Ledger

 
New York • art • painting • Jasper Johns • Metropolitan Museum of Art

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