Jasper Johns

Matthew Marks is pleased to present Jasper Johns, Drawings (1982–2021). The exhibition includes twenty-five drawings in a wide variety of media, many of which have rarely or never been exhibited.

Spanning the last forty years of Johns’s long career, the drawings in the exhibition feature many of the artist’s well-known motifs, which draw from an extensive personal lexicon of symbols and images. In 1964, Johns encapsulated his approach to art making: “Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.” These motifs include autobiographical references, the American flag, patterns like the flagstone or harlequin print, and images taken from other artists such as John Cage, Picasso, de Kooning, and Rodin.