Jasper Johns, The Summer Critic, from "Selected Words of Marcel Duchamp" (ULAE 40) , 1966

9 3/4 × 12 3/4 in

24.8 × 32.4 cm

Edition of 10

Hand-signed by artist, Hand signed and numbered from the edition of only X (Roman numerals)

"I never wish for critics."
-Jasper Johns

Eager to share Marcel Duchamp with Japanese audiences, Shuzo Takiguchi - a Japanese-born poet, critic, and artist with ties to Surrealist circles, assembled an international portfolio of graphic works by various artists with strong ties to Duchamp - including Jasper Johns - to accompany the deluxe version of his monograph, "To and From Rrose Sélavy (aka Marcel Duchamp)." In this rarely seen Jasper Johns mixed media work, the debt to Duchamp is obvious, but its sensibility is uniquely that of Johns. The work is hand signed and titled from the limited Roman Numeral Deluxe edition of only ten (X), aside from the regular edition of 50. As this work was published in Japan in a very small edition, it is rarely seen stateside. The late 1960s was one of the most desirable and influential eras in Pop Art history. Most other editions of this iconic Jasper Johns print are already in the permanent collections of major museums and institutions worldwide, which is why it is so elusive - especially in such fine condition, from the Deluxe edition, as is the present work. "The Summer Critic" was based upon two earlier sculptures Jasper Johns had done, and was included in a 2019 exhibition at the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York City, "The Critic", September 13 - October 26, 2019. According to the press release accompanying the exhibition, "Alex Kitnick, who wrote the exhibition essays, writes, “Not long ago I started gathering depictions of critics to see what artists might tell us about criticism...The first thing that came to mind were Jasper Johns’s The Critic Smiles (1959) and The Critic Sees (1961). The first sculpture, a small mottled object made of Sculp-metal, fixes teeth onto a toothbrush; the second, and perhaps more memorable, places a mouth inside each lens of a pair of eyeglasses. These gnomic works are often thought to be somewhat mean, a reading abetted by some of the artist’s own comments (comparing criticism to a ‘police function,’ for example). One might also see them as part of a history of artists’ digs at critics, including Arthur Dove’s 1925 collage The Critic, which places a flimsy newspaper man on roller skates, a vacuum in his left hand. But I think that these works — as well as Richard Hamilton’s The Critic Laughs (print 1968, sculpture 1972, video 1980) — have more to offer than simple putdowns. While Johns’s sculpture suggests that the critic is out of sorts, it might also point to a multisensory approach to getting one’s head around art, bringing together vision and language in close connection. […] Johns’s work also signaled a crisis in criticism taking place in the 1960s.”... (courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery)

LITERATURE
ULAE 40