Art © Jasper Johns and ULAE /Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
On view
Theodora Walton William Walton III Pavilion
Decoy II,
1971–73
Printed by Bill Goldston and James V. Smith at Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE)
Published by Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE)
The differences between reality and representation and between painting and printmaking have been formative subjects of Johns’s art. In his color lithograph Decoy (1971), Johns referenced some of his most iconic paintings of the 1960s, presented in a collage-like format. Using stenciled letters to spell out the names of colors and photolithography to represent three-dimensional sculptures cast from life, he invites the viewer to contemplate what is real and what is illusionary in the print. In 1973 he further complicated this image by having seven new color plates printed on top of discarded Decoy proofs to create a second lithograph, Decoy II, on view here. Johns said that he believes the meaning of an object is transformed through memory and repetition, suggesting that our interpretation of a hunter’s decoy is quite different from the feelings we have regarding the duck it represents.
Calvin Brown, former Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings
More Context
Handbook Entry
Much of the work of Pop artist Jasper Johns has been analyzed in terms of the recurring motifs within his paintings and sculpture, as well as in his lithographs, which he began making in the 1960s as a vehicle for his virtuoso draftsmanship. As though mocking the reductionism of such interpretations, in 1971 Johns created <em>Decoy</em>, a densely layered lithograph that drew heavily on the artist’s private iconography. In <em>Decoy</em>, Johns alluded to his signature subjects with photolithographic images of a can of Ballantine Ale and a plaster cast, as well as with stenciled letters spelling out the colors of the spectrum, thus referencing his prior work. Subsequently, in 1973, printing on top of press overruns from <em>Decoy</em>, the artist added seven more lithographic plates to create <em>Decoy II</em>. In the additions that differentiate <em>Decoy II</em> from its source, Johns further obscures the original images with dark, gestural applications of crayon and wash to suggest a revision or nullification of <em>Decoy</em>. If a "decoy" may be interpreted as that which ensnares or baits, then it is in this spirit, with <em>Decoy II</em>, that Johns pushes readings of his work toward enigmatic illegibility.
Information
1971–73
Printed by Bill Goldston and James V. Smith at Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE)
Published by Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE)
North America, United States, New York, West Islip
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1976," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 36, no. 1 (1977): p. 28-40., p. 40
- Johanna Burton et al., Pop art: contemporary perspectives, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven, CT: distributed by Yale University Press, 2007)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 288 (illus.)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 340
