Alphabet

1959

Jasper Johns
American, born 1930

While Jasper Johns has worked with stencils of alphabet letters since the 1950s, this is his only painting that shows a single sequence from A to Z. The artist made Alphabet the same year in which he introduced riots of primary color—augmented by touches of green, pink, orange, pale blue, gray, brown, black, and white—into his work. We might try to read this painting in order, letter by letter, from top left to bottom right. But the jumble of strokes, daubs, smudges, and collaged fragments of painted paper scatters our eyes across the animated surface, challenging any sense of sequential progress. In this way, two different stylistic approaches—orderly grids of stenciled forms versus brushy gestures—are set against one another.

Status: On View, Gallery 292
Department: Contemporary Art

Artist: Jasper Johns
Title: Alphabet
Place: United States (Object made in)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 1959
Medium: paper on hardboard
Dimensions: 30.5 × 26.7 cm (12 × 10 1/2 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Edlis Neeson Collection
Reference Number: 2015.121

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