Untitled (White Mezzotint) [1st element 1st state] 1995

This print by Jasper Johns is made with mezzotint, a super labour-intensive process that can create amazing tonal gradations. Looking at this dark, velvety surface, I imagine Johns rocking the metal plate with a tool to create tiny burrs, then smoothing them away to make the image appear. I can almost feel him thinking, how can I make something emerge out of darkness? What’s really cool to me is the juxtaposition of recognizable symbols and imagery, and the abstract tonal field. Like, what’s with the image of a bike within a frame? What about the sun-like image on the left and that odd pair of shapes to the left of the bike? He’s almost daring you to find a definitive meaning in the relationship between the objects. Johns is in a constant dialogue with other artists, like Duchamp, Rauschenberg, and Cage, riffing on their ideas and pushing the boundaries of what art can be. He invites us to embrace uncertainty, to find beauty in the ambiguity, and to question our assumptions about seeing.