In Johns’s many depictions of him, Farley is usually paired with a second figure-a mirror-image, Farley in reverse. ![]() Farley is a masculine version of the “Mater Dolorosa,” the art-historical archetype of the weeping woman. Yet the image is stirring precisely because it undercuts clichés about American heroism. He later said in an interview that he felt a twinge of embarrassment when he first saw the photograph in Life. Real marines are not supposed to cry. It shows Farley weeping in a supply shack he had just completed a helicopter mission that left one of his buddies dead. The dozen works in the show that overtly reference him are based on a 1965 black-and-white photograph in Life magazine by Larry Burrows, the British photojournalist. Farley, a former marine who served in Vietnam and survived the war. The works on view are crisply divided into five series, the largest and most ambitious of which might be called “Farley Breaks Down”-to borrow a phrase that is stenciled across two paintings in a way that suggests that the letters of the alphabet are themselves breaking down or decomposing as they fade in and out of view.įarley, as it turns out, is James C. Yet the show doesn’t feel lugubrious, perhaps because Johns has been prolific and inhabits the new work so vividly. ![]() You would have to turn to Edgar Allan Poe to find an American artist more in touch with the grave. Johns, who is now eighty-eight years old, did much of the work in the past few years, and it captures him meditating on age and evanescence with remarkable directness. The theme permeates Johns’s large, very moving show at the Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea. We arrive in the world, we depart from the world, and there is no guarantee of happiness in between. The title alone offers a view of life as starkly unsentimental as any memento mori. A skull peers out from the corner of his work as early as 1963–1964, in a bright, blocky painting called Arrive/Depart. Human skulls are enduring motifs in art history, and Jasper Johns has a longstanding acquaintance with them. Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
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