“I am always striving to find the balance between chaos and order in my work.”
—Jasper JohnsJasper Johns’ 1976 screenprint Corpse and Mirror radiates with restless, hypnotic energy, its kaleidoscopic surface alive with the rhythmic cadence of both order and disorder. At first glance, the densely packed crosshatched lines seem chaotic, but closer inspection reveals a meticulous structure: interlocking diagonal marks that mirror and repeat across the composition. The geometric arrangement and bold palette evoke a fragmented version of the flag motif for which Johns is so renowned, with its vivid primary colours shimmering over subtle undercurrents of secondary tones. A faint imprint of a can lingers on the right-hand panel, a quiet, almost incidental trace that disrupts the work’s precision, hinting at the physicality of its creation. The screenprint transforms a simple crosshatch motif into a meditative puzzle, inviting the viewer to lose themselves in its shifting layers of complexity and colour.
Katy Martin, Jasper Johns painting a screen at Simca Print Artists, New York, 1980. Image: © Katy Martin 2024 “I only saw [the crosshatching] for a second, but knew immediately that I was going to use it. It had all the qualities that interest me – literalness, repetitiveness, an obsessive quality, order with dumbness, and the possibility of a complete lack of meaning.”
—Jasper JohnsDeparting from the flags and numbers of his earlier works, the crosshatching motif found in Corpse and Mirror became Johns’ exclusive vehicle of artistic expression for almost a decade beginning in 1974. The motif first caught Johns’ attention fleetingly, when he glimpsed a mesh of slanted, diagonal lines on the side of a passing car while driving along the Long Island Expressway. Reflecting on its immediate allure, Johns later remarked, “It had all the qualities that interest me – literalness, repetitiveness, an obsessive quality, order with dumbness, and the possibility of a complete lack of meaning.” Across his paintings, drawings, and prints, Johns explored endless permutations of crosshatching, building increasingly intricate systems of colour, mirroring, and reversal. These repeated yet subtly varied marks are gestural yet not overtly emotional, a deliberate counterpoint to the impassioned abstraction of the Abstract Expressionists. In doing so, Johns pioneered a new kind of painterly abstraction – rigorous, experimental, and rooted in both order and ambiguity.
Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait between the Clock and the Bed, 1940-43, Munch Museet, Norway. Image: Vidimages / Alamy Stock Photo Johns’ distinctive crosshatching also finds an intriguing connection to Edvard Munch and his Self-Portrait Between the Clock and the Bed of 1940-43. The art historical legend goes that a friend of Johns saw the Munch painting displayed in Norway and, upon spotting the similarity between Munch’s bedspread and the crosshatching prolific in Johns work, send him a postcard of the Munch painting. However, it has also been speculated that Johns saw the Munch painting much earlier, in an exhibition in 1950, and had been drawn to Munch’s work for many decades. Later, in 1981, Johns painted a three-panel crosshatch work and titled it Between the Clock and the Bed, directly paying homage to Munch and his self-portrait.
The title of Johns' Corpse and Mirror relates to Surrealism and their well-known parlour game Exquisite Corpse, in which players created collaborative drawings or texts by responding blindly to the folds of the previous participant’s contribution. This spirit of fragmented continuity finds itself in Johns’ six-part composition, split down a central vertical axis with mirrored patterns on either side. Yet these mirrored halves are not perfect reflections; subtle variations between the two halves, such as the differing background tones, engage the viewer in a process of active looking. As Johns himself described, “What I tend to do is work freely with the brush on the screens, getting whatever shapes the brush makes. Then I tend, with additional screens, to reinforce those shapes and that confuses a little bit the flatness of it and suggests a different kind of activity.” Through his layered mark-making and the considered arrangement of crosshatched lines, shifting direction at each tier, Corpse and Mirror fondly recalls the disjointed yet connected compositions characteristic of the Surrealist game.
Details from the present lot Corpse and Mirror demonstrates Johns' ongoing exploration of screenprinting in the 1970s, which began following his introduction to Hiroshi Kawanishi and Takeshi Shimada at Simca Print Artists, a screenprinting studio in New York. His collaboration with Simca began with Screen Piece (1972), and this inaugurated a decade of intense activity in the medium. With their expertise, Johns pushed the boundaries of screenprinting, translating the tactile, gestural effects of his paintings into the finely calibrated textures of prints like Corpse and Mirror. Unlike the flat, commercial aesthetic often associated with Pop Art, Johns manipulated the medium to achieve depth and tactility, applying colour and tone washes through multiple screens to create luminous effects. For Corpse and Mirror, he employed 36 screens, using inks blended with wax, oil, and varnish to achieve varying textured effects.
For Johns, printmaking was an integral part of his artistic process alongside his work in other mediums. He often worked concurrently on the same motif in both painting and print, as he did with Corpse and Mirror, which he first painted in 1974–75 before creating the homonymous screenprint edition in 1976. As Johns explained, “Just the process of printmaking allows you to do things that make your mind work in a different way than, say, painting with a brush does. It changes your idea of economy and what becomes a unit.” This dialogue between painting and printmaking allowed him to examine the constraints and possibilities of various motifs in each medium, expanding his artistic vocabulary and deepening his exploration of repetition and variation. In Corpse and Mirror, the interconnected nature of Johns’ practice is on full display – a celebration of process, perception, and the endless potential of repetition.
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Literature
Universal Limited Art Editions 169
Artist Biography
Jasper Johns
American • 1930
Jasper Johns is a painter and printmaker who holds a foundational place in twentieth century art history. Quoting the evocative gestural brushstroke of the Abstract Expressionists, Johns represented common objects such as flags, targets, masks, maps and numbers: He sought to explore things "seen and not looked at, not examined" in pictorial form. Drawing from common commercial and 'readymade' objects, such as newspaper clippings, Ballantine Ale and Savarin Coffee cans, Johns was a bridge to Pop, Dada and Conceptual art movements.
Beyond the historical significance, each work by Johns is individually considered in sensuous form. A curiosity of medium led him to employ a range of materials from encaustic and commercial house paint to lithography, intaglio and lead relief.
Property From a Private German Collection
22
Corpse and Mirror (U.L.A.E. 169)
1976
Screenprint in colours, on Nishinouchi Kizuki Kozo paper watermarked Corpse and Mirror, with full margins.
I. 93 x 119.5 cm (36 5/8 x 47 in.)
S. 109 x 135.4 cm (42 7/8 x 53 1/4 in.)
Signed, dated and numbered 10/65 in pencil (there were also 8 artist's proofs in Roman numerals), co-published by the artist and Simca Print Artists, Inc., New York (with their blindstamp), framed.
Estimate
£60,000 - 80,000 ‡
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Evening & Day Editions
London Auction 23 - 24 January 2025
