This exquisite offset lithograph with collage additions after Jasper Johns (born 1930), titled Target, from the album Technics and Creativity, Gemini G.E.L., 1971, originates from the 1971 edition published by The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, and printed by Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles, 1971. A unique hybrid multiple combining printmaking and collage, it reflects Johns’s ongoing exploration of symbol, perception, and viewer participation through the iconic Target motif.
Executed as an offset lithograph in two colors with collage additions, including physical paint brush and paints on velin paper, this work measures 10.5 x 8.5 inches. Signed in the plate and unnumbered as issued. The edition exemplifies the superb craftsmanship of Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles.
Artwork Details:
Artist: Jasper Johns (born 1930)
Title: Target
Medium: Offset lithograph in two colors, collage additions, including physical paint brush, and paints on velin paper
Dimensions: 10.5 x 8.5 inches (26.67 x 21.59 cm)
Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered as issued
Date: 1971
Edition: XXIID
Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
Printer: Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles
Catalogue raisonne reference: Johns, Jasper, et al. The Prints of Jasper Johns, 1960-1993: A Catalogue Raisonne. Universal Ltd. Art Editions, 1994, illustration 89.
Condition: Well preserved, consistent with age and medium
Provenance: From the album Technics and Creativity, Gemini G.E.L., 1971, published by The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; printed by Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles, 1971
Notes:
Excerpted from the album, This publication is produced in conjunction with Technics and Creativity: Gemini G.E.L., an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art of selected prints and multiples by such leading artists as Josef Albers, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella. Published by Gemini at their workshop in California. The box contains a catalogue with 364 illustrations (20 in color), an essay by Riva Castleman, Associate Curator of Prints at the Museum, and a catalogue raisonne of Geminis complete production. Also included in the box is a 10.5 x 8.5-inch multiple by Jasper Johns, Target 1970, specially commissioned for this publication. A two color offset lithograph with a collage of watercolor pads and brush, the multiple invites you to collaborate with Jasper Johns in creating your own version of his Target. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
About the Publication:
Technics and Creativity: Gemini G.E.L., published by The Museum of Modern Art in 1971, stands as a landmark project documenting the first major wave of experimentation at Gemini G.E.L., the Los Angeles workshop that redefined American printmaking in the postwar era. Conceived as both an exhibition catalogue and a teaching tool, the publication highlights the groundbreaking technical innovations achieved through Geminis collaborations with leading artists including Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly, Claes Oldenburg, Josef Albers, and Frank Stella. Under the direction of Sidney Felsen and Stanley Grinstein, Gemini introduced new methods in lithography, screenprinting, embossing, and sculptural multiples, transforming the possibilities of the print medium. MoMAs volume includes an extensive catalogue, critical essays, and a specially commissioned multiple by Jasper Johns, affirming the deep relationship between museum scholarship and contemporary printmaking practice. Today, Technics and Creativity remains a foundational reference in the history of American prints and multiples, prized by collectors, scholars, and institutions worldwide.
About the Artist:
Jasper Johns (born 1930) is widely regarded as one of the most influential and transformative American artists of the postwar era, a painter and printmaker whose groundbreaking fusion of abstraction, symbolism, and conceptual inquiry placed him in direct dialogue with towering modernists such as Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, Wassily Kandinsky, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray while establishing a new visual and intellectual foundation for contemporary art; emerging in the mid 1950s with his revolutionary paintings of flags, targets, numbers, alphabets, and other everyday symbols, Johns rejected the emotional volatility of Abstract Expressionism and instead introduced a cool, analytical approach grounded in the semiotic play between object and image, employing encaustic, collage, graphite, and sculptural relief to create layered works that examine how meaning is constructed and perceived; his dialogues with Duchamps conceptualism, Picassos structural inventiveness, Miro and Kandinskys color logic, Giacomettis existential figuration, and Man Rays experimental attitude helped shape a singular aesthetic that directly influenced and helped catalyze Pop Art, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art, inspiring contemporaries and successors including Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, Donald Judd, Bruce Nauman, Glenn Ligon, Christopher Wool, Mark Bradford, Mark Grotjahn, and Wade Guyton; celebrated for more than seven decades, Johns’s work is held in the worlds most prestigious museums including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate Modern, the Centre Pompidou, and the Moderna Museet and he is recognized as one of the most intellectually rigorous and technically inventive artists of the 20th and 21st centuries; his market remains exceptionally strong, with his highest auction record achieved on November 11, 2014, when Flag (1983) sold for 36,000,000 USD at Sothebys New York.
Jasper Johns Target 1971, Jasper Johns Technics and Creativity, Jasper Johns Gemini GEL multiple, MoMA 1971 Jasper Johns.
