Jasper Johns began his career in the mid-1950s by re-creating, with great precision, such familiar images as targets, letters, numbers, and flags. Although his subject matter has become less commonplace, he continues to “borrow” from the public domain. Perilous Night, for instance, owes its title to a pivotal and expressive piece of music written by the American composer John Cage (1912–1992) in 1945. Both score and cover sheet are rendered on the right-hand side of the drawing with Johns’s characteristically fluid handling of ink. On the sheet’s left side is a freehand rendition—abstracted, reversed, and turned ninety degrees—of a single, terror-stricken soldier from the Resurrection panel of Matthias Grünewald’s sixteenth-century masterwork the Isenheim Altarpiece (Unterlinden Museum, Colmar). Between the soldier and the musical score is a black imprint of Johns’s right arm, evidence perhaps of the creative power that can merge two disparate images into a cogent statement. The overcome soldier witnessing the Resurrection of Christ and a piece of music marking a key transition in a composer’s career both point to “perilous nights” that can change the course of a human life. Characteristically, Johns also explored the same subject in different media. This somberly colored drawing derives from a painting of the same name (1982; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC).
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.
Andrea C. Papadakis (editor), Art and Design: Aspects of Modern Art (London, 1989), p. 75 (color ill.).
James Cuno, “Reading the Seasons,” in Jasper Johns: Printed Symbols (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1990), p. 86.
Adrian Searle, “Take a Skull; Cover It with Paint,” Artscribe International, 80 (Mar.-Apr. 1990), p. 10 (color ill.).
John Russell, “The Drawings of Jasper Johns: Delight Tempered by Challenge,” New York Times (May 21, 1990), p. C11.
Dawn Elizabeth Marar, “Jasper Johns Drawings at the National Gallery,” Art Times 6:11 (July 1990), p. 9.
Robert Bernstein, “Jasper Johns’s The Season’s: Records of Time,” in Jasper John’s: The Seasons, Prints and Related Works (New York: Brooke Alexander Editions, 1992), pp. 10 and 12, fig. 2.
Robert Staltonstall Mattison, “Jasper Johns,” in Masterworks in the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection (New York: Hudson Hills, 1995), p. 45.
Jill Johnston, Jasper Johns: Privileged Information (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996), pp. 106, 125, and 251.
Michael Kimmelman, “Sifting Among Icons for Keys to Jasper Johns,” New York Times (Oct. 18, 1996), p. C32.
Jasper Johns Retrospektive (Munch: Prestel, 1997), p. 340 (color ill.).
John B. Ravenal, Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch: Inspiration and Transformation (Richmond: Virginia Museum of FIne Arts, 2016), pp. 75 and 104 (color ill.).
Robert Bernstein, Jasper Johns: Redo and Eye (New York, Wildenstein Plattner Institute, 2017), pp. 224 and 241, fig. 8.8.
James N. Wood and Sally Ruth May, The Art Institute of Chicago: The Essential Guide (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1993), p. 220 (ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, Treasures from the Art (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2000), p. 317 (Ill.).
The Menil Collection, Jasper Johns: Catalogue Raisonné of Drawing, Volume 3 1980-1989 (Houston: The Menil Collection, 2018), pp. 88-89, no. D346 (color ill.).
Chicago, Carl Solway Gallery, Chicago International Art Exposition, “A Tribute to John Cage,” May 7-12, 1987, cat. 18 (color ill.).
United States Pavillion, Venice Biennale, “Jasper Johns: Work Since 1974,” June 26-Sept. 25, 1988, cat. 16.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Jasper Johns: Work Since 1974,” Oct. 23, 1988-Jan. 8, 1989, cat. 18, p. 68 (ill.).
London, Anthony d’Offay Gallery, “Dancers on a Plane: Cage, Cunningham, Johns,” Oct. 30-Dec. 2, 1989, cat. 14 (color ill.); also Liverpool, Tate, Jan. 23-Mar. 25, 1990.
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, “The Drawings of Jasper Johns,” May 20-July 29, 1990, cat. 89 p. 281 (color ill.).
New York, Museum of Modern Art, “Jasper Johns,” Oct. 20, 1996-Jan. 21, 1997, cat. 190, p. 326 (ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, “Modern and Contemporary Works on Paper,” Mar. 24-Sept. 13, 2009, no cat.
Philadelphia, PA, Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror”, September 29, 2021 - February 13, 2022, p. 227, 242 (ill), cat. by Carlos Basualdo and Scott Rothkopf, et. al.
Sold by Janie C. Lee Gallery, Houston, to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1989.
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