Summer (frontispiece for "Poems" by Wallace Stevens) [proof 2nd state] 1985

Jasper Johns made this print in 1986 as a frontispiece for a book of poetry, using etching to build layer upon layer of grey and black marks. I love to imagine him in the studio, coaxing these inky shapes into being through pure trial, error, and intuition. Just look at the way he's built up that figure on the left with soft grays and blacks—it’s like he’s trying to conjure a memory, or maybe even a ghost. You know, Johns has always been so good at making us see the familiar in a totally new way. There's something so intimate about the way the brick wall presses against the figure. I see these forms as being engaged in a kind of conversation, like visual echoes bouncing off the walls of Johns’ mind. I see this print, and I think of Rauschenberg, Twombly, of all the artists who are constantly talking to each other across time, inspiring each other to see the world a little differently. And that, to me, is the real magic of painting—it's never really about answers, but about endless questions.