Between the Clock and the Bed (Primary Title)
Jasper Johns, American, born 1930 (Artist)
“I was riding in a car, going out to the Hamptons for the weekend, when a car came in the opposite direction. It was covered with these marks, but I only saw it for a moment—then it was gone—just a brief glimpse. But I immediately thought that I would use it for my next painting.” —Jasper Johns
Hatch marks appear as details or as an overall pattern in many of John’s paintings and prints, beginning in the early 1970s. In Between the Clock and the Bed, what at first seem to be random marks are, in fact, a carefully structure system of repeated and reversed patterns. The left- and right-hand sections of the three-part painting mirror each other nearly exactly.
John’s paintings are often densely layered visual puzzles that explore the paradoxes inherent in the twin poles of painting—abstraction and representation. This piece’s title, Between the Clock and the Bed, comes from a late self-portrait by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944), after Johns noticed the resemblance between his own hatch-mark pattern and the pattern of Munch’s bedspread.
Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch: Love, Loss, and the Cycle of Life, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, November 19, 2016 - February 20, 2017
Johns + Munch, Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway, June 18 - September 25, 2016
Jasper Johns: Gray, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, November 3, 2007 - January 2, 2008; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, February 18 - May 18, 2008
Jasper Johns: A Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, October 16, 1996 - January 14, 1997
Beyond the Frame: American Art 1960 - 1990, Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, July 6 - August 18, 1991; National Museum Of Art, Osaka, Japan, August 29 - September 29, 1991; Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan, November 15 - December 15, 1991
Jasper Johns: Work Since 1974, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, October 23, 1988 - January 8, 1989
Jasper Johns: 1974-1986, The 43rd Biennial Exhibition, Venice, Italy, June 26 - September 25, 1988
Painterly Visions, 1940-1984: The Guggenheim Museum Collection and Major Loans, Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, June 28 – September 3, 1985
Jasper Johns, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, NY, January 28 – February 25, 1984
[1] Brandt, Frederick R. Late 20th-Century Art: Selections from the Sydney and Frances Lewis Collection in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1985. p. 114.
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