Jasper Johns: For Art Enthusiasts

Jasper Johns's (b. 1930) prolific career spanning over 60 years is the focus of this spectacular publication, which is the most comprehensive and definitive study of the artist's work to date. The book, written by noted Johns expert Roberta Bernstein, explores the synergy between continuity and change in the development of the artist's work through 2014. Bernstein's voluminous insight, gained over decades of knowing the artist, enlivens the text, and she incorporates Johns's own unique manner of talking about his art through interviews and public statements.

Each chapter of the book is focused on a specific time period and its prevailing themes in Johns's paintings and sculptures, and throughout the book, related drawings and prints are referenced as contributions to an advanced understanding of the work. The book's compelling subtitle, the phrase "redo an eye," which appears camouflaged in Johns's 1966 painting Passage II, neatly summarizes a persistent aspect of the artist's art.

Johns's works, at turns ambiguous, ironic, and poignant, simultaneously engage the visual senses and challenge habits of perception. Jasper Johns: Redo an Eye is a thoughtful celebration of how Johns's art inspires the viewer to resist habits of perception, in turn affecting the way one experiences and interacts with the world, which is the hallmark of an extraordinary artist.

The book is published in association with the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, and it is largely concerned with the relations between seeing and knowing, seeing and saying, and seeing and believing, as expressed by Jasper Johns in 1965.

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