An innovative retrospective look at the work of one of America’s most iconic artists, utilizing the concepts of mirroring and doubling, which have long preoccupied Johns

Jasper Johns (b. 1930) is arguably the most influential artist living today. Over the past 65 years, he has produced a radical and varied body of work marked by constant reinvention. Inspired by the artist’s long-standing fascination with mirroring and doubles, this book provides an original and exciting perspective on Johns’s work and its continued relevance. 

A diverse group of curators, academics, artists, and writers offer a series of essays—including many paired texts—that consider aspects of the artist’s work, such as recurring motifs, explorations of place, and use of a wide array of media. These include Carroll Dunham on nightmares, Ruth Fine on monotypes and working proofs, Michio Hayashi on Japan, Terrance Hayes on flags, and Colm Toíbín on dreams, among many others. The various themes are further explored in a series of in-depth plate sections that combine prints, drawings, paintings, and sculptures to draw new connections in Johns’s vast output. Accompanying “mirroring” exhibitions held simultaneously at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this lavishly illustrated volume features a selection of rarely published works along with never-before-published archival content and is full of revelations that allow us to engage with and understand the artist’s rich and varied body of work in new and meaningful ways.

Carlos Basualdo is Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Curator of Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Scott Rothkopf is senior deputy director and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.