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Jasper Johns 0-9: plate 8 1963 Lithograph in gray, on Angoumaois paper, with full margins, I. 15 1/2 x 11 7/8 in. (39.4 x 30.2 cm); S. 20 1/2 x 15 5/8 in. (52.1 x 39.7 cm) signed, dated `63' and annotated 'PROOF' in pencil (there were three editions of 10 each with lithographs in black, gray and in colors, annotated A/C, B/C and C/C respectively), published by Universal Limited Art Editions, West Islip, New York (with their blindstamp), a foxmark at left, pale time staining, otherwise in very good condition, framed.
Provenance Louver Gallery, New York; Brooke Alexander Gallery, New York; Private Collection, California Literature Universal Limited Art Editions 18 Catalogue Essay Johns primary memory [of producing this series at ULAE] was that the [litho] stones were heavy and he needed the assistance of Robert Rauschenberg and a local bum to carry them up to his lower Manhattan studio. Johns drew a zero on his first stone. This zero, unlike his first completed print, Target, 1960, which was derived from a drawing, was an essay in figuring out how to go about making a lithograph. It was a symmetrical image not requiring any facility for reversing order, and the single digit seems not to have been placed on the stone with any composition in mind. The frieze of numbers at the top was added, derived from a second drawing, so that the stone now carried two elements never associated before. Johns later decided to use the transformational character of printmaking to create an entire set of numerals from zero to nine on one stone. As he had never made a lithograph, his concept of what he would do hardly arose from understanding; he knew only that he could make corrections and at each stage perhaps prints could be taken. Robert Blackburn, who printed Johns’s work between 1960 and 1962, had mastered lithography in France, principally for his own creative work. Yet neither he nor Johns nor Mrs. Grosman knew of Picasso’s similar lithographic project, a series of bulls in which the shape of the bull became more abstract in successive stages, through changes made on the same stone. Mary Callery the sculptor who had aided Mrs. Grosman in the establishment of U.L.A.E., even had a set of the prints in her nearby Long Island home. Johns proceeded over a period of nearly three years to create a suite of all the numbers, drawn, as he had conceived, on the same stone. To reinforce the element of transmutation, each portfolio (there were thirty in the published edition: ten in color inks, ten in black, and ten in gray) carried a uniquely overprinted numeral identical with the number that portfolio represented in the edition. A determination to take ideas involving sets of elements to an ultimate yet infinitely repeatable conclusion is perfectly achieved in the suite 0-9. Riva Castleman Jasper Johns A Print Retrospective, May 20-August 19, 1986, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, p.13 Read More Artist Bio Jasper Johns American • 1930 Jasper Johns is a painter and printmaker who holds a foundational place in twentieth century art history. Quoting the evocative gestural brushstroke of the Abstract Expressionists, Johns represented common objects such as flags, targets, masks, maps and numbers: He sought to explore things "seen and not looked at, not examined" in pictorial form. Drawing from common commercial and 'readymade' objects, such as newspaper clippings, Ballantine Ale and Savarin Coffee cans, Johns was a bridge to Pop, Dada and Conceptual art movements. Beyond the historical significance, each work by Johns is individually considered in sensuous form. A curiosity of medium led him to employ a range of materials from encaustic and commercial house paint to lithography, intaglio and lead relief. View More Works