Jasper Johns
American, born 1930Target with Plaster Casts, 1978 - 1980
On view
Etching with aquatint on paper
Dimensions29 11/16 × 22 3/16 in. (75.4 × 56.4 cm)
Image: 23 1/2 × 17 11/16 in. (59.7 × 44.9 cm)
Gift of the Friends of Modern Art, 1995.8
By representing common objects, like a target, in the realm of fine art, American artist Jasper Johns broke down the boundaries between fine art and everyday life. He effectively laid the foundation for the Pop Art movement’s aesthetic embrace of commodity culture with his playfully subversive appropriation of common signs and products.
In many of his works, lines, brushstrokes, and marks are worked and reworked. Printmaking is well suited to this style of experimentation with mark-making. In Target with Plaster Casts, the thin scratchy lines of the etching allowed the print to have a textural quality whereas the aquatint achieved a more painterly effect. This print is an artist’s proof, an impression taken to see the current state of the plate while it is being worked on by the artist.
