Winter [1/2 trial proof] 1986

This trial proof print titled, Winter, by Jasper Johns, is like a quiet storm rendered in shades of grey and white. Imagine Johns working on this, maybe late at night, the studio lit by a single lamp, pulling images from his mind. The surface has an eerie quality. The image feels like a ghostly assemblage of familiar motifs—bits of bodies, tools, and abstract shapes all rendered in a cool palette. There’s a textural dance happening; areas where the ink is densely layered contrast with delicate, almost skeletal lines. I wonder, was he thinking about the way memories haunt us, layering over each other until they form something new and strange? Johns is always in conversation with art history, and you can feel the echoes of artists like Duchamp and Schwitters here. He is asking us to consider how images accumulate meaning, how they shift and change each time we revisit them. It's this sense of ongoing inquiry, of embracing ambiguity, that makes his work so compelling.