Matthew Marks Gallery

Surveying four decades of work from one of the most important artists of mid-to-late 20th century

Jasper Johns (born 1930) has spent 70 years developing a distinctive lexicon of symbols and images gathered from art history, popular culture and personal experience. With a newly commissioned text by Hilton Als, Drawings 1982-2021 presents 25 works in a variety of media over the last 40 years that demonstrate the mastery of technique and material, and the continuous preoccupation with questions of his own past, that are foundational to the evolution of Johns’ rich and enigmatic oeuvre. Revisiting some of his most iconic motifs--the American flag and crosshatch, flagstone and harlequin patterns--he moves back and forth through other familiar imagery and references to artists such as de Kooning, da Vinci, Picasso and Rodin, reconfiguring and recombining them while steadily incorporating new subjects, including a grieving soldier, skeletons and the cosmos.