Volume 36, Number 1 · February 2, 1989
Johns
By William H. Gass
Jasper Johns: Work Since 1974 Pennsylvania, (October 23, 1988–January 8, 1989)
an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia,
Jasper Johns: Work Since 1974
catalog of the exhibition by Mark Rosenthal
Thames and Hudson (in association with the Philadelphia Museum of Art), 112 pp., $29.95
Foirades/Fizzles: Echo and Allusion in the Art of Jasper Johns University of California, Los Angeles, distributed by the University of Chicago Press
by Jasper Johns, by Samuel Beckett, by Edith A. Tonelli, by John Cage, by Richard S. Field, by Andrew Bush, by Richard Shiff, by Fred Orton, by James Cuno
The Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Wight Art Gallery,, 322 pp., $24.95 (paper)
S.I. Newhouse shifted his left hand slightly, Larry Gagosian responded to the sign by making a small one of his own, and John Marion then announced another $250,000 advance in the bidding for Jasper Johns's 1959 canvas called False Start. However, it was finally not a wave from the publisher of Vogue and Vanity Fair but a nod that passed the call for a half million boost in the pace of business from prospective owner through his agent to auctioneer, and overdrew the bankbooks of the competition. It was wholly appropriate, at this level of high finance, that the chairman of Condé Nast should bend his head and the chairman of Sotheby's bring the hammer down while onlookers applauded the price of victory; for when fashion and gossip possess a fortune, where better to make a $17 million show of it than in the rooms where the idols of the marketplace are invested with their divinity. A few days before, Jasper Johns's White Flag had reached $7 million at Christie's, and a simple drawing slipped away to St. Louis for $3.9 million.
Review, 8121 words
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