Untitled (Red) [working proof with chalk and pencil additions] 1982

This working proof by Jasper Johns includes chalk and pencil additions. The artwork is like a site of inquiry, where the artist invites us to think about color and representation. I imagine Johns in the studio, circling around these stenciled words—Red, Yellow, Blue—trying to free them from their literal meaning. He throws in an arrow, pointing down. Is this a visual guide, an instruction? The surface is alive with all these marks, this combination of chalk and pencil. There’s a sense of addition, erasure, revision. I can feel him, almost, making decision after decision, in real time. It reminds me of Rauschenberg, who was doing similar things around the same time. These artists were in a constant dialogue, always pushing the boundaries of what painting could be. Johns’ process becomes a form of embodied expression, where meaning is not fixed but emerges through exploration. The painting becomes a space for thinking about how we see and experience the world, embracing all its ambiguity and uncertainty.