Untitled (Red) [1st state] 1982

This is a print by Jasper Johns, and it's full of energy, even though it's black and white. Can you imagine the kind of wrestling match Johns had with this plate? I think he’s asking himself, what does it mean to write a word, and what does it mean to see it? It's like he’s saying, “I'm going to paint ‘red,’ but I’m not going to paint it red.” He’s playing with that idea that language can be both concrete and totally abstract. Look at the marks, how they build up, scrape away, and then redefine. It feels like a back-and-forth, a give-and-take. There are stenciled words that are also clearly hand-done. It reminds me of Rauschenberg's layering of images and text. Artists are always riffing off each other, you know? Johns is in conversation with Duchamp and the Dadaists, and later artists will be in conversation with him. The process of making art becomes this ongoing dialogue across time, inspiring new ways of seeing and thinking.