Skin with O'Hara Poem

ARTIST

Jasper Johns
American, born 1930

MEDIUM

Lithograph on architectural drafting paper

DATE

1965

DIMENSIONS

Overall: 21 15/16 x 33 15/16 in. (55.8 x 86.2 cm)

CREDIT

Ackland Fund, selected by The Ackland Associates

BACKGROUND

Johns depicts the terrors of contemplating one's mortality in a self-portrait of 1963-65. Allusions to the potent symbolism of the Catholic relics of the Shroud of Turin and Veronica's Veil are clear. And yet Johns' squashed facial features present neither the image of a peaceful death nor the clear hope of a resurrection. Printed onto the surface from the greased marks of head and hands that he rolled onto a lithographic stone, Johns seems instead to be struggling to push his way out from underneath the semitransparent prison of the engineer's drafting paper. The accompanying poem by Frank O'Hara speaks of apocalyptic occurrences, "the heavens go out of kilter . . . in a season of wit / it is all demolished." Trapped between death and resurrection, physical actuality and intellectualized creativity, skin and its printed residue, Johns powerfully expresses the fear of the unknowable future.