Maleren kommer til at skrive et digt

Begyndelsen på Marjorie Perloffs artikel "Watchman, Spy, and Dead Man: Jasper Johns, Frank O'Hara, John Cage and the "Aesthetic of Indifference":

In a sketchbook for 1964, Jasper Johns began to make notes for his paintings Watchman and According to What. On one particularly tantalizing page, he makes a sketch for what would appear in both paintings as the wax cast of a man's lower torso, positioned on the seat of a chair, itself bisected vertically to accommodate the depth of the fragmented figure (fig. 1). Torso and chair are inverted so that the long left leg extends upward to meet the word "spy" at the lower margin of the enigmatic text, positioned as a reversed L-shape above it:

The Watchman falls "into" the "trap" of looking.
The "spy" is a different person
"Looking" is & is not "eating" & also "being eaten"
That is, there is continuity of some sort among
the watchman, the space, the objects.
The spy must be ready to "move," must be aware
of his entrances & exits.
The watchman leaves
his job & takes away
no information.
The spy must remember
and must remember himself
& his remembering.
The spy designs himself
to be overlooked. The
watchman "serves" as a
warning. Will the
spy & the watchman
ever meet? In a
painting named Spy,
will he be present?
The spy stations himself
to observe the watchman.

If the spy is a foreign object
why is the eye not irritated?
Is he invisible?
When the spy irritates, we try
to remove him.
"Not spying, just looking"--
Watchman.

[WSI 59-60]
In the square inside the L-shaped text, Johns has written: "Somewhere here, there is the / question of "seeing clearly." / Seeing what? According to what?"


Jasper Johns: Watchman (han har aldrig/endnu ikke malet et maleri, der hedder "Spy")

Hvordan staver en maler til et venskab med en digter?

- Hvordan han staver til et digt med sit ansigt og sine hænder:



(Jasper Johns: Skin With Frank O'Hara Poem)

-  Hvordan han staver til digteren med sin fod:



(Jasper Johns:  Memory Piece (Frank O'Hara))

Den seneste skeforskning II

An artist friend in London prompted me to ask about a less obvious connection. He guessed that early in their careers Johns and Rauschenberg had found Picasso's 1914 painted bronze sculpture "Glass of Absinthe" a singularly generative object.
Johns did not answer yes or no; he seldom does. He said, "I think that's probably true. I think I thought that it was absolutely wonderful, the casting, the painting, the addition of the sugar spoon - all of it. In a sense it's like the Duchamp glass piece, all those different materials used in slightly different ways."
Spoons figure among the common objects Johns has built into his own work.

(fra et 2012-interview)

2 betydelige minder om Franks følelser

Først skriver digteren et digt, fordi han har haft nogle følelser, og måske (det er der givetvis forsket i (der er nok også forsket i, hvilke følelser, der præcist er tale om)) er det simpelthen skrevet i én bevægelse på mindre end en time, måske endda mindre end en halv time -

Frank O'Hara: "In Memory of My Feelings":

My quietness has a man in it, he is transparent
and he carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets.
He has several likenesses, like stars and years, like numerals.

My quietness has a number of naked selves,
so many pistols I have borrowed to protect myselves
from creatures who too readily recognize my weapons
and have murder in their heart!
though in winter
they are warm as roses, in the desert
taste of chilled anisette.
At times, withdrawn,
I rise into the cool skies
and gaze on at the imponderable world with the simple identification
of my colleagues, the mountains. Manfred climbs to my nape,
speaks, but I do not hear him,
I'm too blue.
An elephant takes up his trumpet,
money flutters from the windows of cries, silk stretching its mirror
across shoulder blades. A gun is "fired."
One of me rushes
to window #13 and one of me raises his whip and one of me
flutters up from the center of the track amidst the pink flamingoes,
and underneath their hooves as they round the last turn my lips
are scarred and brown, brushed by tails, masked in dirt's lust,
definition, open mouths gasping for the cries of the bettors for the lungs
of earth.
So many of my transparencies could not resist the race!
Terror in earth, dried mushrooms, pink feathers, tickets,
a flaking moon drifting across the muddied teeth,
the imperceptible moan of covered breathing,
love of the serpent!
I am underneath its leaves as the hunter crackles and pants
and bursts, as the barrage balloon drifts behind a cloud
and animal death whips out its flashlight,
whistling
and slipping the glove off the trigger hand. The serpent's eyes
redden at sight of those thorny fingernails, he is so smooth!
My transparent selves
flail about like vipers in a pail, writhing and hissing
without panic, with a certain justice of response
and presently the aquiline serpent comes to resemble the Medusa. 

Så læser maleren digtet og bliver inspireret til at male et maleri, et stort maleri, "600 x 399",  og det har helt sikkert taget pænt lang tid at male (og konstruere - at hænge en ske, den helt rigtige ske, i en snor) -

Jasper Johns: "In Memory of My Feelings - Frank O'Hara, 1961":



- og digtet er med alle sine sprogbilleder lige så abstrakt som maleriet med alle sine kratterier er figurativt, og omvendt, som om digtet forsøger at skrive sig ind i en abstrakt ekspressionisme, ved at gå amok med billedsprog, mens maleriet forsøger at male sig ud af abstrakt ekspressionisme, ved at gå amok med kratteri - men STILEN med hvilken, der skrives/billedtales og males/krattes, er så altafgørende nonchalant, distræt anti-ekspressionistisk - OG SKEEN! (og måske parallelt: "window # 13"); og måske er projektet i både digt og maleri at ikke udtrykke, men AFtrykke gennemsigtighed, multi-gennemsigtighed?, bogstaveligt og paradoksalt,

og så kan man læse digtet alene eller sammen med maleriet og se maleriet alene eller sammen med digtet, hvilket ikke er det sammen som at læse digtet sammen med maleriet, og i det hele taget: læs malerier mindre, se digte mere!

Hov, en grøn engel

Jeg blev lige glad for, at Jasper Johns lever, 83 år gammel, i Sharon, Connecticut, OG på øen St. Martin, og prøvede at finde det seneste, afbilledede billede, han har malet, dette er "Green Angel" fra 1990:



Her giver præsidenten ham en medalje:



Her er øen St. Martin:



Og her er øens flag - MAL DÉT BEDRE I 2014, JOHN!