0 Through 9
10 x 7 ½ inches0 Through 9 (ULAE 181), 1977
image: 3 ¼ x 2 ½ inches
paper: 10 x 7 ½ inches
frame: 11 1/4 x 8 3/4 inches
edition: 63 with 12 AP's and 1 PP
signed and dated in pencil, numbered
published by Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles, with their blindstamp and inkstamp on the reverse
Literature
Richard Field, Jasper Johns Prints 1970-1977, Wesleyan University, Middletown, 1978, Catalogue Reference 257, p. 121, 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 79, n.p., another impression reproduced.
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Additional Photos
Full Sheet
Image Detail
Signature & Date lower right
Gemini blindstamp
Of all Johns's recurrent motifs, none has appeared more insistently in his oeuvre than numbers. From the 1950s until today, he has created more than 170 paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures that feature numerals in one of four principal structures: as individual figures; as superimpositions; and in sequences of zero to nine, either in two stacked rows or arranged in larger grids. Like flags, maps, and targets, numbers are preexisting signs open to a variety of aesthetic and interpretative operations. Yet unlike his other motifs, numbers inherently suggest a recursive stream of endless proliferation. They are part of a combinatory system with a given order that can repeat and unspool over and over again. They lack any essential scale or innate color and so offer a perfect matrix for formal experimentation and play. In Johns's work, numerals zoom in and out of scale and focus; flicker from one color to the next; and disappear into busy grounds or emerge declaratively from them.
JASPER JOHNS 0 THROUGH 9
Of all Johns's recurrent motifs, none has appeared more insistently in his oeuvre than numbers. From the 1950s until today, he has created more than 170 paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures that feature numerals in one of four principal structures: as individual figures; as superimpositions; and in sequences of zero to nine, either in two stacked rows or arranged in larger grids. Like flags, maps, and targets, numbers are preexisting signs open to a variety of aesthetic and interpretative operations. Yet unlike his other motifs, numbers inherently suggest a recursive stream of endless proliferation. They are part of a combinatory system with a given order that can repeat and unspool over and over again. They lack any essential scale or innate color and so offer a perfect matrix for formal experimentation and play. In Johns's work, numerals zoom in and out of scale and focus; flicker from one color to the next; and disappear into busy grounds or emerge declaratively from them. This potentially excessive, even manic, accretion offers an artistic analogy for a digital age in which numerals function as the basic building blocks of data sets and code, summoning the ceaseless protocols of production, automation, and transmission that undergird our daily lives.
Jasper Johns's sixty-year involvement with printmaking has been so profound that it is hard to say whether the medium was a natural extension of his turn of mind or what shaped it. In 1964, he wrote in his sketchbook, "Take an object / Do something to it / Do something else to it / repeat] This oft-quoted precept aptly describes Johns's painterly investigations of a motif such as a target or a flag, but it even more perfectly epitomizes the process of making a print. In that instance, the "object" is an image on a plate, which the artist and printers subject to myriad possible revisions before proofing and printing with various inks and papers. Working with a matrix necessarily allows-even frees-Johns to experiment intuitively with the formal and expressive possibilities of an image, as does the collaborative nature of the printshop, the alchemy of the half-blind procedures, the ease of testing variations, and the chance outcomes of the press. Since his first lithograph in 1960, made at the invitation of Tatyana Grosman, founder of Universal Limited Art Editions on Long Island, New York, he has made 343 editioned prints and more than two thousand unique proofs and monotypes in collaboration with master printers at studios on two continents. Nearly all feature motifs found in his most important paintings and sculptures or elaborate on those works themselves. Yet Johns's prints are never mere reproductions. They expand on ideas latent in his work in other media and constitute a labyrinthine parallel corpus that both summarizes his oeuvre and pressures it into new directions.
Printmaking inherently involves reversal and reproduction, two hallmarks of Johns's art. Throughout his paintings and drawings, he often flips compositions left to right or top to bottom. He mirrors patterns around a seam or impresses surfaces with implements he sometimes leaves stuck to them. All this happens more easily, if not automatically, in printmaking, and over the years his work in that medium has amplified his fascination with these operations on canvas. Without the aid of an offset press, the image on the matrix necessarily mirrors what is printed on the paper, and a plate can just as effortlessly be rotated before the next proof is pulled. But the greater conceptual correspondence between Johns's printmaking and the rest of his art lies in its essentially systematic and lerative procedures. Johns often works recursively from one painting to the next to the one after that. An image frequently returns-sometimes years and even decades later-in a different size, medium or palette.
Prints both collapse and extend this modality. On the one hand, an individual image may depostioner successive discrete campaigns on a matrix, sometimes flowed by the sequential superimposition of multiple plates.
”What interests me is the technical innovation possible for me in printmaking.” John’s remarked in 1969. For Johns, each technique suggests its unique quality and possibility. Lithography allows “great facility”; the etching plate can ”store multiple layers of information”; and silkscreen is “best used for images which require sharp edges and smooth-textured, flat, clear areas of color.” These techniques are not rote instruments for realizing a preconceived end but instead “make up the life of the work really,” as Johns has said. “They are real concerns and make the working process a very lively activity, something other than the reproduction of an image; they alter what ‘image’ is."
The condition of Jasper Johns prints plays a pivotal role in preserving the integrity and value of these artworks. The presence of mat staining, fox marks, and attenuated colors can significantly impact the overall aesthetic and historical integrity of these artworks. When considering a purchase of a Jasper Johns print, it is crucial to be wary of dealers who claim prints are in good condition despite such issues, as this may be a deliberate attempt to mislead buyers. Transparency is imperative in the art market and dealers who purposefully omit condition details are not acting in the best interest of the collector. It is also advisable to avoid dealers who artificially enhance colors in photos, distorting the true condition of the artwork. Choosing dealers who provide accurate representations, even if it reveals imperfections, ensures that buyers make well-informed decisions, maintaining the authenticity and value of Jasper Johns prints over time.
