The Easel

28th September 2021

Jasper and me

Not so much a review of a huge Johns retrospective as a personal meditation on his enigmatic work. Johns rebelled against 1950’s abstract expressionism with radical work about “things the mind already knows … things seen and not examined”. It had a huge impact – “like the Beatles kicking out Elvis”, opening the door to important new art ideas. Johns, says the show’s curator, is “[perhaps] the most important living artist for more than 60 years”.