Exhibitions

Jasper Johns (b. 1930) has for four decades played a central role in contemporary art. He is widely celebrated as the pre-eminent painter, printmaker and draughtsman of his generation. His work brilliantly conjoins the intellectual and the sensual and, like so much great art, challenges and stimulates the beholder at the same time. Although there have been several general retrospectives of his work, and of his drawings and prints, as well as thematic shows of the related works, there had not been an exhibition of his sculptures until this one.

Jaspar Johns: The Sculptures presented the major part of John's activity as a sculptor. The selection was made by Fred Orton in collaboration with the artist. The exhibition travelled to Menil Texas before coming to Leeds. The works all came from private American collections - though some had been on loan to Philidelphia-  and many had never been exhibited before. The exhibitions and the accompanying catalogue by Fred Orton showed Johns's remarkable achievement as a sculptor and throws new light on the meaning of his work as a whole.

Basic to the sculptures is the theme of illusion versus reality, and the constant questioning of reality and identity. Johns's bronze representations of beer cans, a coffee can with paintbrushes in it, light bulbs and flashlights, so carefully sculpted and painted that it is difficult to tell them from the originals, have been taken as the beginning of Pop Art. There is much more to them than that. They were an important contribution to that moment between 1958 - 1961 when sculpture came to be regarded not simply as an interesting form of modern art alongside painting but as the practice with which to explore the very condition of artistic modernism. Subsequently, between then and now, Johns has continued to make sculptures that delve deeper into the meanings of the images in his paintings.





The first ever retrospective of the sculptures of America’s most celebrated living artist. This complete survey of his reproductions of everyday life includes his work with light bulbs, beer cans and paintbrushes.

Selected by Fred Orton with the help of the artist.