0-9
15 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches0-9 (ULAE 155), 1975
paper: 15 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches
image: 4 1/2 x 9 1/4 inches
frame: 18 1/2 x 15 1/4 inches
edition: 100 with 20 AP's & 2 PP's
signed & Dated in Pencil "J Johns 75" lower right
numbered in Pencil by the Artist lower left
© 2024 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Literature
Richard Field, Jasper Johns Prints 1970-1977, Wesleyan University, Middletown, 1978, Catalogue Reference 206, p. 102, another impression reproduced in black and white
Richard Field, The Prints of Jasper Johns 1960-1993: A Catalogue Raisonne, ULAE, New York, 1994, Catalogue Reference ULAE 155, n.p., another impression reproduced in black and white.
Roberta Bernstein, Carter E. Foster, Jasper Johns Numbers, Cleveland Museum of Art, 2003, pg. 80, another impression reproduced in color.
Blazwick Iwona, Jasper Johns: Shadow and Substance, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2013, pg.8, another impression reproduced.
Selected Museum Collections
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland
National Gallery of Art, Australia
Additional Photos
Johns’ so-called "Figure" images were the result of a variety of ideas, experiences and influences. Johns himself claimed that the notion of these works was a perversely literal reaction to de Kooning's figure paintings. Johns' numerals, like his Flags and Maps, are also sometimes linked to the mindless routines of his life during his time in the Army, as well as to his artistic experiences-- for instance with poster-making and cartography-- while he was serving.
JASPER JOHNS 0-9 NUMERALS
Johns’ so-called "Figure" images were the result of a variety of ideas, experiences and influences. Johns himself claimed that the notion of these works was a perversely literal reaction to de Kooning's figure paintings. Johns' numerals, like his Flags and Maps, are also sometimes linked to the mindless routines of his life during his time in the Army, as well as to his artistic experiences-- for instance with poster-making and cartography-- while he was serving.
This play with notions of representation, appropriation, and reality has informed almost all of Johns' works. Just as his Flag not only appeared to show a flag but also was a flag, so too in 0-9 we see the numbers. Presented as it is here, within the context of an artwork, it is unclear whether it has been written or represented. For this is a basic and elemental fragment of our reality, of our lexicon, of our world. Any person familiar with the Western numeral system knows these numbers, celebrated like an icon. It is instantly recognisable, infinitely versatile, and as such becomes a form of readymade. Discussing his use of numerals as subjects, Johns has stated that, "They seemed to me preformed, conventional, depersonalised, factual, exterior elements" (J. Johns quoted in D. Sylvester, Interviews with American Artists, London, 2002, p. 151).
This interest in using fact, in taking something entirely objective as his subject matter, something so perfectly finite, was revolutionary. There is no room for the personal anguish or expression of the Abstract Expressionists. "I'm interested in things which suggest the world rather than suggest the personality," he explained.
"I'm interested in things which are rather than in judgments. The most conventional things, the most ordinary things-- it seems to me that those things can be dealt with without having to judge them; they seem to me to exist as clear facts not involving aesthetic hierarchy" (J. Johns quoted in R. Francis, Modern Masters: Jasper Johns, New York, London & Paris, 1991, p. 21).
With the numerals that he selected as his subject matter, Johns increased this sense of the given, of the pre-conceived subject, by choosing stencilled images that somehow gave the sense that they were the perfect, generic embodiments of the number that they conveyed. In 0-9, this is clear in the newspaper-print-like font that Johns has used to render the numeral. Discussing such sources, Johns said, "That's what I like about them, that they come that way" (J. Johns quoted in Francis, Ibid., p. 29).
In taking a simple numeral, one of the simplest building-blocks of our thought systems, and enshrining it on the surface of the prints, he begs us to look both at the picture as an object, and also at the number itself. Johns, in a manner that parallels some of the writings of Wittgenstein, is questioning the nature of "numerals," the arbitrary reflex that the viewer shows in looking and instinctively reading it, the strange way in which language applies labels to concepts and objects. Wittgenstein himself had written in terms that apply perfectly to Johns' paintings, especially those showing flags, maps and numerals:
"The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his inquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him.-- And this means: we fail to be struck by what is most striking and powerful" (L. Wittgenstein quoted in R. Bernstein, Jasper Johns' Paintings and Sculptures 1954-1974: "The Changing Focus of the Eye", London, 1985, p. 94).
There is nothing integral in the numerals "0-9" that reflects the concept that they convey. It is a cipher, and Johns, like Wittgenstein before him, is bringing our attention to that. He is asking us to contemplate the obvious, to seek out the striking nature of "0-9" from which we are so inured as to be oblivious. As the artist himself explained, "I am concerned with a thing's not being what it was, with its becoming something other than what it is, with any moment in which one identifies a thing precisely and with the slipping away of that moment, with at any moment seeing or saying and letting it go at that" (J. Johns quoted in "Interview with G.R. Swenson," Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, K. Stiles and P. Selz, eds., Berkeley, Los Angeles & London, 1996, p. 324).
It is precisely by enshrining the numerals in 0-9 that Johns has taken it away from its use and purpose. Now they float, devoid of context, desperately flailing in their inability to signify.
The entire process of illusion has been removed, replaced by something that appears to be writing. By taking a number as his source, Johns has found the merest pretext for the viewer to look at the entire purpose of printmaking, of representation. On this level too, Johns is begging us to look at the obvious, forcing us to change the extent to which, as Wittgenstein explained above, 'we fail to be struck by what is most striking and powerful.' In a revelatory moment, Johns is asking us to look at the picture itself, rather than its content.
Just as Johns' interests in facticity and objecthood mirrored Wittgenstein long before he had even considered reading the works of the Austrian philosopher, so too he was surprised when an early review referred to him as "neo-dada." Johns apparently was unsure what this meant, and therefore researched and read, a path that led him to Marcel Duchamp. Even before he had known who Duchamp was, there had been a Duchampian character to his work and certainly his ideas; this direct contact now led to a consolidation of Johns' conceptual foundations, as witnessed in the new use of color in his paintings. His increasing focus on the painting as an object was almost in opposition to some of Duchamp's works, and yet the increasing painterly quality in Johns' pictures from 1959 onwards nonetheless reveals a methodology that owes a great deal to the chess-like maneuvers of the older artist.
Reproducing real objects, in this case the independent symbols or cyphers of a strictly logical language, Johns seemed to be beginning a semiotic investigation of reality through artistic exploration. "I like to repeat an image in another medium to observe the play between the two: the image and the medium." Johns recalled, "In a sense one does the same thing two ways and can observe differences and sameness - the stress the image takes in different media." (C. Geelhaar, "Interview with Jasper Johns," Jasper Johns Working Proofs, exh. cat., Kunstmuseum Basel, 1979, p. 39). The "stress" the image came under should, Johns hoped, allow for what he once described as" a new thought for that object". It was Johns' central prerogative to diminish the amount that a viewer could 'read' in his art, remove any clues and feelings that might prompt certain responses from a viewer. In a sense, Johns was denying himself the manipulation of the viewer that lies at the heart of so many artists' works. However there is an element of manipulation even in this: Johns blinds the viewer with letters and words which distract us from the print as an art object. The numbers are numbers, and unlike the targets are not mere representations.
Johns chose a typeface that had deliberately little context in itself, indeed this was precisely "what I like about them," he has said, "that they come that way" (Johns, quoted in R. Francis, p. 29). The numbers were a form of readymade writing. In 0-9, however, this is not the case: Johns has instilled his own sense of the ideal number form into the work. As in his paintings of the Flags, Johns has painstakingly created a distant and impersonal picture, rendering his own idea of the ideal, unspecific numeral. The distant, or universal, nature of the subject matter appears to jar with the incredibly detailed manipulation of the etching plate, which has a great presence on the paper, a feeling of true substance. However, it is precisely this combination of the artist's palpable efforts in creating the work and the arbitrary nature of the subject matter that highlights Johns' role, and success, in creating a universal image.
Johns said of his printmaking practice: "…it’s the techniques that interest me. My impulse to make prints has nothing to do with my thinking it’s a good way to express myself. It’s more a means to experiment in the technique. What interests me is the technical innovation possible for me in printmaking."
#JasperJohns 0-9 series (U.L.A.E. 156-165), 1978 the complete set of 10 etching and aquatints, sells for $80,640 @phillipsauction Editions Southampton 6/25/2022, triple the pre-sale estimate. https://t.co/B2qZucwKTt pic.twitter.com/3SHphPMLBX
— Jasper Johns Prints (@JohnsPrints) June 27, 2022
