Frans Hals had black; Jasper Johns has gray. | Jasper Johns: Gray (Art Institute of Chicago)

book: Jasper Johns: Gray (Art Institute of Chicago) | Douglas W. Druick, James Rondeau

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	• Jasper Johns: Gray (Art Institute of Chicago) Douglas W. Druick, James Rondeau Art Institute of Chicago, 2007 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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A muct have for contemporary artists

I have found this book most helpful. The articles written by the various contributors is worth the price alone. The illustrations are satisfactory as most of these works are about texture.This book will be a friend for a long time.

Frans Hals had black; Jasper Johns has gray.

I hesitated before ordering this book. I already own 5 books about Jasper Johns and was thinking to myself that owning one more would not add much to my appreciation of this great artist. I was wrong. This book, the catalogue for an exhibition held at the Chicago Art Institute in 2007, is full of marvelous illustrations (of some recent works like the Catenary series) and brilliant essays on the importance of this most difficult of colors, gray, in the work of Johns. The quality of the illustrations is such that they enable the reader to see all the nuances of the artist's palette as if we were standing in front of the paintings (or drawings, or prints, as a matter of fact). In this respect, all the photographs were taken by the same photographer using one type of material only so as to show the works in the same light and shade. Johns's gray is like Hals's black: he has hundreds of different grays and the book reveals this perfectly.

Highly recommended.

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Jasper Johns (b. 1930), one of today's most acclaimed and influential artists, is rarely considered in relation to monochromatic art. Yet single-colour experimentations have figured prominently in his productions since 1955, and within that significant subset of his work, the majority of monochromes are grey. In fact, every one of his iconic, serialized forms has been articulated in grey. This elegant book, spanning Johns' full career, examines this singular preoccupation, presenting a revolutionary new understanding of and appreciation for the artist as an accomplished tonalist. Johns' greys traverse an infinitely expressive spectrum of differentiated hues and values evident in the new photography expressly commissioned for this catalogue. The volume features paintings, sculptures, drawings, lithographs, silkscreens, etchings, and aquatints created in a wide array of grey media: oil and acrylic paint, encaustic, collage, Sculp-metal, aluminum, lead, silver, graphite, pastel, watercolour, and ink. This book also features recent works published here for the first time. Anchoring this essential publication are compelling essays that enrich our perspective on this prolific artist's entire oeuvre.

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