As a painter, sculptor and printmaker, Jasper Johns (1930 - ) is one of the best-known American’s post-abstract expressionist. His familiar iconic symbols were hailed as essential progenitors of Pop Art and Minimalism. He had his first one-man exhibition in 1958 at the Leo Castelli Gallery and during the year 1961, his picture named “Gray Numbers” won the International Prize at the Pittsburg Biennale. He became famous in the art world almost overnight.

With the description of Kirk Varnedoe: “He is given a grand moment in he sun as the man who comes on the stage in order to slay the demon of Pollock and Kline and De Kooning and open up space for Don Judd and Andy Warhol and Frank Stella, and follows.” (1)

In the middle of 1950’s, Jasper Johns became distant to Abstract Expressionism with a radical decision. He had thought that Abstract Expressionism has macho, aggressive and mannish energy. (2) So he became closer to the less show off feelings and ideas. Using American flag, letters and numbers he constituted an iconography including popular meanings. He described ordinary things, which can easily be obtained.

He started to stick real life objects on his canvas. With this experimental interference, his art seemed to be coded by those objects. It had been over 30 years, when Duchamp’s fountain first appeared. So it means that the spectators had already used to come across the daily life objects.

In this short writing we are going to take one of Johns’ sculpture called “Painted Bronze” and try to look through its iconographic meaning.

Johns’ Cans as a “Couple”

At the end of 1950’s and at the beginning of 1960’s. Jasper Johns started to make sculptures. These sculptures are well known objects like images in his paints. But the difference is, these objects present themselves in more emotional way. Buried melancholy inherent in these works has become much more apparent with it’s symbols.

“To me they seem to parody the macho, beer-drinking, first-fighting culture shared by abstract expressionist at the Cedar Bar, a culture from which Johns’s temperament presumably left him excluded. In a work entitled High School Days, he sculpts a lace-up Oxford shoe and places a circular mirror in the toe, just as 1950s teenage American boys fitted a silver of mirror into the their penny loafers, supposedly to enable them to look up girls skirts.” (3)

No doubt, his one of the most important influence was Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp inspired him in the 1960’s even more than the other artists of his generation. Johns was using daily life objects like Duchamp too, but in a different way. Duchamp’s ready mades represents their selves in the original way of look. Their philosophical background is clear and also conceptual aspect is heavier than Johns’ sculptures.

“That son of a bitch Castelli, You could give him two beer cans and he could sell them.”
Willem de Kooning

According to an often-told story, Jasper Johns heard that the abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kooning, had complained to dealer Leo Castelli. Jasper Johns’ career is unimaginable without the partnership of Leo Castelli, the preeminent gallerist of the era and the artist’s exclusive commercial representative for nearly forty years. It is possible to think that Johns could take De Koonings’ behavior as provocation. He had already been thinking and making sculptures of common objects.

Beer cans appear us on a low high base. They are settled in the same way and their similarity makes us to think that they are industry products. But at first look, it seems like; there are series of brush strokes on the cans. But it is easy to see that, there is illegible writings saying that “American largest selling Ale.” Actually; those beer cans are painted bronze. Jasper Johns gave them a shape first and afterwards, he painted them.

The beer cans label is Ballentine Ale. It is one of the American’s best-known labels. They are also the first breweries to sell canned beer in six packs for home consumption. In the 1940’s and 1950’s Ballantine sponsored the New York Yankees. They later owned the Boston Celtics basketball team for a time. During this time Ballantine Ale was a favorite of many famous American writers. Author John Steinbeck was featured in an ad for Ballantine Ale in 1953 and Ernest Hemingway did the only commercial endorsement of his life for Ballantine Ale. Other famous Ballantine fans included Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, Olympian Jim Thorpe, boxer Rocky Marciano, and Frank Sinatra.

Whenever these beer cans are discussed, most of the people like to talk about the play between what is real and what is fiction, or where reality ends and art begins. This is the conceptual way of look. But is it possible to figure out a private meaning as well? Could it be only based on a joke or can we find another explanation for these two beer cans. Outwardly, John’s ordinary objects are placed between dada and pop images, and there is no need to say that they have a narrative expression.

Those objects are also carrying symbolic and iconographic senses. We can say that; they are related to human and human relations. The objects’ sizes are strengthening their way of look. But on the other hand the pictorial expression is still catching one’s eyes...

(Flag, 1955)

We can easily give a meaning to these objects. It is related to American kind of life style and also consign to abstract expressionism’s macho attitude. But there is a small detail; one beer can is opened and the other one is closed. The one, which is closed, represents virginity or with another saying virgin (not touched) and by this evaluation the other beer can represents exactly the opposite meaning. But this diversity doesn’t make any sense to the spectators at the first sight. Maybe the three rings could be a clue for us. Three rings symbolize "Purity, Body, and Flavor", it was inspired from the wet rings left on a table by Peter Ballantine (brewer).

These small differences on the cans make a sense. We can evaluate this sign as referring relationship between individuals. Depending on their similarity, we can say that they have same status. In other words, this sameness could represent the same sexuality. If we make it related to Jasper Johns life, this conclusion could appear easily:

During his first years in New York, Jasper Johns was working in a bookstore and thinking about being a poet. In 1953 he met Robert Rauschenberg and decided to focus on painting. He started to live with Rauschenberg at the same building. They saw and discussed each other’s work on daily basis. They lived as a “couple” over eight years before they got separated.

“Pollock and de Kooning had the Cedar Bar; Johns and Rauschenberg had each other. In a sense, Johns and Rauschenberg were almost a world unto themselves during the first year of their relationship” (4)

Bibliography
Art in Theory 1900-2000,”Jasper Johns Interview with David Sylvester”, ed.Charler Harrison&Paul Wood, Blacwell Publ., 2002.
Cooper, Emanuel, “Jasper Johns: Ordenary Things”, Contemporary Art Magazine, issue:4 Londra, 1996
Dorment, Richard, www.theartnewspaper.com/artcritic/level1/riviewarchive/1996/may_15_1996_main.html
Kaufman, Jason Edward, Interview: Kirk Varnedoe of MoMA, “Jasper Johns: More than the Slayer of Abstract Expressionist Giants”, The Art Newspaper, Oct. 1996.
Katz Jonathan D., “Jasper Johns’ Alley Oop: On Comic Strips and Camouflage www.yale.edu/lesbiangay/pages/academic
www.falstaffbrewing.com/ballantine_ale.htm

Dipnotlar
(1)The Art Newspaper, Interview: Kirk Varnedoe of MoMA, “Jasper Johns: More than the Slayer of Abstract Expressionist Giants”, Oct. 1996, p16-17.
(2) Emmanual Cooper, Contemporary Art Magazine, issue: 4, London, 1996, p: 53-57.
(3)Richard Dorment, www.theartnewspaper.com/artcritic/level1/riviewarchive/1996/may_15_1996_main.html
(4) Jonathan D. Katz, “Jasper Johns’ Alley Oop: On Comic Strips and Camouflage www.yale.edu/lesbiangay/pages/academic