Interesting, rather.
Much of his work was in fact grey. Yes, it's true. but was it necessary? I mean, grey is a nice filler and all, but Jasper, buddy...really? Grey?All of it? ...Alright.
I'm not even going to lie, it's a great idea. And thats pretty much 99% of this business. It proves art still exists. Good art in fact. But some of his work just reminded me too much of my red-eye i.e. worst flight ever from PDX. However, his work "Periscope" was amazing. Blew my mind completely. Much of the font would spell out colors in different sized stencil font. Simple and brilliant. It was a dried up smear of rivers of Nestles Chocolate Syrup on a large canvas that was set out in the sun for too long and crispified into a coalescent beauty. It's look and form radiated with modern elements that were just knocking the other paintings off the walls. Elements of abstraction, and disjunction; separated into thirds. However the uniformity of this piece is disrupted by a half circle that impedes the continuity of Jaspers incrediabstractedness. Periscope played well with the negative space which surrounded it because of its ambiguous color simplicity. Grey. Well done Jasper. There really isn't a need for any other color, grey just punishes.
His other pieces, which were basically synonyms of each other, were Jubilee (1959) and his color version False start (1959).
false start
Jubilee
False start was vibrant. It was colorful, and boisterous. This piece utilized multiple, striking blotches of color. Randomly, these blotches of paint almost seemed to represent a checkers board, only a fruity checkers board. In front of these blotches of paint were stenciled words naming colors. However, when it said BLUE, the color of that font was not blue, it was red. This remained the theme through out the painting for all his text. This piece was created in 1959. let's not forget that. This was truly a modern piece then, if not still now. This piece is epic. Stencil font is a popular and widely abused font in todays design world. Especially among urban artists, along with skateboarding and snowboard designers. Three or four years ago, an atomic bomb went off in the urban fashion world and the word cliché became known. Fast. For Johns to use this idea back in the late 50's is very interesting. Honestly, what was he thinking? This piece was way beyond its time. I feel like maybe thats why this piece was auctioned for 17 million. Probably a little more ridiculous than incredible, but nonetheless incredible. The simplicity of this piece is beautiful. It really is. It's colors brushed in randomness with stencil words that lie to you is bold, and it works. I just can't get over the fact that it can still be considered modern. This just proving that waves of styles get recycled by hipster doofuses who cash in on good ideas turned bad art.
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