Jasper Johns, Alley Oop, 1958

Jasper Johns’s groundbreaking work sent shock waves through the art world when it was first shown in the late 1950s, and he has continued to challenge new audiences – and himself – over a career spanning more than sixty-five years. He was born in 1930 in Augusta, Georgia; spent the majority of his adult life in New York; and today lives in Sharon, Connecticut, where, at the age of ninety-one, he remains active in his studio.

Jasper Johns, Target, 1957

Jasper Johns, Mirror’s Edge, 1992

Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 1958

Johns’s early use of common objects and motifs, language, and inventive materials and formats upended conventional notions of what an artwork is and can be. His profoundly generative practice helped spark movements including Pop art, Minimalism, and Conceptualism, among others, and has inspired successive generations of artists to this day.

Jasper Johns, Map, 1963

Jasper Johns, Field Painting, 1963–64 / Untitled, 1998

Jasper Johns, According to What, 1964

Jasper Johns, Studio, 1964

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror is the most comprehensive retrospective ever devoted to Johns’s art. Featuring his most iconic works along with many others shown for the first time, it comprises a broad range of paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures from 1954 to today across two sites. Conceived as a whole but displayed in two distinct parts, the exhibition appears simultaneously at the Whitney Museum of American Art and at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, two institutions with which Johns has had long-standing relationships. This unique dual structure draws on the artist’s lifelong fascination with mirroring and doubles, so that each half of the exhibition echoes and reflects the other.

Jasper Johns, Moratorium, 1969

Jasper Johns, Racing Thoughts, 1984

Jasper Johns, Painted Bronze, 1960

Jasper Johns, Untitled, 2018

Jasper Johns, Untitled, 1992–94

Organized in largely chronological order, the retrospective presents pairs of related galleries – one in each city – that offer varied perspectives on the artist’s turns of mind. Individually, each gallery focuses on a particular aspect of Johns’s thought and work through the lens of different themes, processes, images, mediums, and even emotional states. Taken together, they provide an immersive exploration of the many phases, treasures, and mysteries of a radical, enduring, and still-evolving career.

Jasper Johns, Flags, 1965 / Good Time Charley, 1961

Jasper Johns, Disappearance II, 1961

Jasper Johns, Screen Piece, 1967 / Screen Piece 2, 1968 / Screen Piece 3 (The Sonnets), 1968

Jasper Johns, In Memory of My Feelings—Frank O’Hara, 1961

This exhibition is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The organizing curators are Carlos Basualdo, Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Scott Rothkopf, Senior Deputy Director and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, with Sarah B. Vogelman, Exhibition Assistant, in Philadelphia, and Lauren Young, Curatorial Assistant, in New York.

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror
September 29, 2021 – February 13, 2022
Whitney Museum of American Art / Philadelphia Museum of Art
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