Jasper Johns’s Landmark ‘Crosshatch’ Paintings Anchor Major Gagosian Survey

In what is sure to be one of the most-talked about blue-chip gallery presentations in the new year, mega-gallery Gagosian will host a survey of Jasper Johns “Crosshatch” paintings at its Madison Avenue gallery in New York next month. The show marks the 50th anniversary of the artist’s landmark series.

The exhibition, titled “Between The Clock and The Bed,” and organized in partnership with the Castelli Gallery, homes in on the crosshatch paintings and drawings that were a focal point of the artist’s practice from 1973 to 1983. It unites works that have rarely been seen, along with loans from major American museums.

Two interesting art historical points of note: Johns’s crosshatch paintings had their debut at Castelli Gallery in 1976; while Gagosian’s flagship gallery at 980 Madison Avenue opened in 1989 with an exhibition of Johns’s “Map” paintings.

Johns himself is lending major works from his own collection to the exhibition, including paintings that are currently on long-term loan to museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; and the Philadelphia Art Museum. Other notable lenders include the Broad, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. There are additional works from private collectors and those gifted to museums by the late Agnes Gund.

The 95-year old Johns is one of the most famous and sought-after living American artists. The top price ever paid for a work at auction, according to the Artnet Price Database, is $55.3 million for (1960), sold on November 9, 2022 at Christie’s as part of the Paul Allen collection.

The artist’s introduction of the crosshatch in 1972 was an unexpected development that marked a shift from his depictions of ordinary, everyday items, signs, and snippets of language—what the artist described as “things the mind already knows.”

In 2021, the Whitney Museum and the Philadelphia Museum organized a major two-part concurrent Johns retrospective “Mind/Mirror” that ran through the following year.

Highlights at the upcoming Gagosian show include works from his “Corpse and Mirror” series (1974–84), (1975), and (1980–81), a tribute to the artist’s friend, choreographer Merce Cunningham. The exhibition also brings together all six paintings (1981–83), which are riffs on Edvard Munch’s famed latter-day self-portrait from 1940–43.

Gagosian will also publish a catalogue to accompany the exhibition, with essays from Roberta Smith and Carlos Basualdo, the co-curator of “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror.”