Souvenir
Artist/Maker
Jasper Johns
United States, b. 1930
Date1972
CultureAmerican
Mediumlithograph
DimensionsSheet: 38 1/4 x 29 1/8 in. (97.2 x 74 cm)
Framed: 40 1/4 x 30 1/4 x 1 in. (102.2 x 76.8 x 2.5 cm)
Framed: 40 1/4 x 30 1/4 x 1 in. (102.2 x 76.8 x 2.5 cm)
ClassificationsVisual Works
Credit LineGift of Dr. and Mrs. Martin B. Grossman
Terms
Object number82.0143
On View
Not on viewCollections
DescriptionThis lithograph is based on the painted assemblage, Souvenir, done in Japan in 1964. The original work's iconography is complex and autobiographical. It incorporates an actual plate with a transferred photograph of the artist, purchased by Johns as a souvenir of his Asian visit, a real flashlight that he had once wanted to cast in bronze, a real bicycle mirror, and the depiction of two paintings leaning against and facing each other. - Art of North America
In the lithograph, although the integrity of the individual canvases is obscured, the other translations of assemblage remain. In both painted and graphic forms, red, yellow, and blue are spelled out around the plate. This linguistic device, used by Johns more than once as a substitute for actual color, challenges the viewer to intellectualize, rather than visualize, the three primary colors that comprise painting's fundamental palette. Both Souvenir the painting and Souvenir the lithograph fuse memory and artistic vision and have been exhaustively interp
