1st Etchings
Jasper Johns
American, born 1930
1967
A tied plywood portfolio containing eight prints—primarily etchings with photoengraving—presented with a small window showing Ballantine Ale labels, through which Johns tests the translation of everyday commercial imagery into print.
The pale, spare wooden cover reads like a crate until your eye is drawn to a tiny centered cutout revealing two identical beer labels and the artist’s handwritten “1st Etchings” and signature, a quiet, tactile presentation that frames the printed image as an object.
Johns’s use of etching and photoengraving to reproduce commonplace labels and signs brings his investigation of perception and the ordinary into printmaking, blurring the line between fine art and mass-produced imagery and expanding the language of postwar American art.
Medium
Portfolio of eight etchings, six with photoengraving and one relief printed
Dimensions
compositions (see child records): dimensions vary; sheet (each. approx.): 25 9/16 × 19 11/16" (65 × 50 cm); overall (closed): 28 1/16 × 22 1/16 × 1 3/8" (71.2 × 56 × 3.5 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of the Celeste and Armand Bartos Foundation
Accession
289.1968.1-8
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
