![]() ![]() “Ear”, “hand”, : one would like to see them as elements of a portrait, but they canot be read in that way. Their anonymity as specimens, twice removed from life – first cast, then dipped in monochrome paint – makes them like fossils or even more, like words, signs that stand for classes of things. Meanwhile, the plaster casts of bits of the human body, set in their boxes above the painting, are transformed in exactly the opposite way. What would one aim at? A sign which can only be stared at becomes a painterly image which must be scaned. The idea of putting a bullet through it seems absurb. Despite its target format, the painting is actually in the tradition of visual “all-overness” a continuous matrix of marks that ran from Seurat to Jackson Pollock. In “Target with Plaster Casts”, the target’s five rings present themselves as painting alone: an even edible skin of wax encaustic, no part of it visually “superior” to the rest. The center is not more important than the rings. Its obviousness becomes, in some degree, speculative. It stops being a sign and becomes an image. Once a target is seen aesthetically, as a unified design, its use is lost. ![]() For a painted target automatically negates the use of a real one. “The target is a test, and Johns took it with a sort of deadpan irony to test what one expects a work of art to do. Target with Plaster Casts, Jasper Johns, 1955Įncaustic and collage on canvas with objects,ġ29.5 x 111.8 cm (51 x 44 in), Collection Mr. ![]()
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