As soon as his career started, American artist Jasper Johns flipped the properties of the traditional painting medium of oil paint by combining it with another very old painting technique--encaustic painting. Johns used the encaustic painting technique, traditionally a mixture of wax and a pigment to give it color, with oil paint as the pigment, making the notoriously slow-drying medium of oil paint dry almost instantly. The mixture was heated so it could be smeared onto a canvas. As it cooled, it quickly dried.
In the 1950s, Johns made the encaustic painting Flag. With Flag, Johns combined different art theories, reshaped them, and spoke through them in his own unique voice. Johns continued to shift the focal point and importance of the physical qualities of paint (the texture, color, strokes, and drying time). By layering wax, he made the painting’s thick texture a focal point. But just as Johns made the painting stand out physically, he also brought the intellectual purpose of the piece of art nearer to the forefront.
Marcel Duchamp’s specific brand of Dadaism was an art theory that greatly influenced Johns. Johns incorporated Dadaist sensibilities into his work for the rest of his career. The Dada movement in art came about in response to World War I. The theory was fundamentally anti-war. If the rational thought that strives for and appreciates formal beauty brought World War I, then being pro-art entailed being pro-war. Duchamp--and the Dada movement with him--wanted nothing to do with rational thought or the traditional art it created.
With Fountain (a manufactured plaster urinal) Duchamp not only made the exemplary symbol for Dadaism--he also made a paradigm shift in art history. The ready-made object (a pre-existing object not typically designed for art) could now be classified as art, the physicality of art became less important, and the idea behind the art itself took top priority.
Johns commented on and worked within this Dada framework through his own art. He took something that, in and of itself, was not artistic (a national flag), painted it, and left us wondering: Is a painting of a flag still a flag? Do all of the political implications of national icons follow with it? Do colors and shapes painted together on a canvas recreate the same powerful symbols and meanings that a national flag has? Why do colorful strips of fabric placed together in a specific pattern cause us to attribute such significance to it?
Johns’ Flag also addressed art theory associated with Rene Magritte. Through The Treachery Of Images, Magritte questioned what an image painted on a canvas really is. This painting’s subject matter is a pipe. Underneath the image is written “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” (“This Is Not A Pipe.”) Effectively, Magritte proposes that any object on a canvas is merely paint. The paint is not actually what it depicts. It is not a pipe, or a portrait, or landscape.
With Flag, Johns responded to Magritte’s insistence that whatever is on a canvas is just paint. Johns felt a painted nation’s flag contains the same connotations as an actual flag. Even though there is a calculated distance in Johns’ Flag (because it is not an actual flag), its meaning can be viewed as the same. And if that is the case, then what is the difference between a flag and a painting of one?
Johns would make a career of depicting familiar objects and shapes while presenting them within a context to make us question if we really know these objects and their meanings after all. He said he wanted his paintings to be viewed like a radiator in an apartment. He wanted to flip the idea of what art is and how everyday objects are viewed. He wanted fine art to be able to feature commonplace objects and not be limited to painting just the grand and majestic. He wanted us, the viewers of his art, to look upon ordinary objects in a way that differs from seeing them as flags or tools. He wanted us to perceive what ordinary objects are, what they say to us, and how we think about them. He wanted us to see how unique and important that given object actually is.
During the 80s, Jean-Michel Basquiat utilized and challenged every painters’ tool that was used up to that point in art history. Basquiat would paint in the vein of Abstract Expressionists from the 40s and 50s--a large image full of non-representational color and texture. Some of Basquiat’s paintings were in the mode of the all-over abstractions of Cy Twombly. Other paintings of his were in an expressionist mode, showing an abstracted figure among an abstract background. Sometimes he combined abstraction, figurative art, and text to make something wholly his own.
Commonly Basquiat would employ text like Twombly, but would then combine that technique with mediums and techniques not typically found on large scale canvas paintings (such as oil pastels, collage, and spray paint); or by painting many layers over a large portion of a canvas, allowing only a small portion of the original image to remain uncovered. In the next breath, Basquiat would paint very minimally. He used only an oil pastel and lone acrylic color on a flatly painted canvas. In these pieces he let the shape of the canvas and the negative space of a picture speak volumes.
For Basquiat’s next painting, he may let the entire piece be text only. While painting on a flat black background, for example, he listed an entire period of Miles Davis discography in white oil pastel. As an avid fan of bop music, simply showing a list of records by a treasured musician communicated what was emotionally important to him. By utilizing handwriting on a plain background, every nuance of every letter came into relief. Following Johns, who questioned the very nature of what subjects should be classified as art-worthy, Basquiat elevated the depiction of a simple list on a large canvas to the significance of a towering historical mural.
When compared to a historical mural, Basquiat’s paintings are more personal and emotionally resonant. The former is determined primarily by geometry and color theory. The latter is determined by the artist’s heart. Basquiat put himself uniquely on the canvas via whatever technique he deployed. Basquiat’s use of many different techniques used throughout painting history took Johns’ ideas of the slippery definition of what a painting is and what it can say to a whole new artistic and personal level. Basquiat’s ability to utilize, apply, and advance Johns’ insights allowed us to see how the various styles and genres were found within his drawing, painting, collage, abstraction, minimalism, and text art while conversed within a single canvas by a master artist. He saw the borders and limits of abstract painting as something that could exponentially expand by combining various genres, tools, and ideas. He found abstract painting rich enough to be the conduit through which he fully articulated himself.
Johnsian theory by way of Basquiat opened up the comic book medium for me. I view the range of possible techniques and ideas in paintings, books, and comics of equal importance. The only difference among them is the amount of clarity and value of emotion I can find. They are ink on paper that, when combined in the story’s context, create a narrative just as editing different angles together creates a feature film. A comic page of mine that shows an abstract painting is just as full of information as a page of prose. A page of prose is just as visual, whether it be within one’s mind or as a visual graphic in a physical book, as a traditional comic page full of panels.
Because of the contextualizing pages surrounding the image, a page of lyrics can have the same visual movement as the arrangement of traditional comic book panels. A full-page abstract painting can have the same effect as a full-page spread of a superhero. When you read a book of mine, do not ask, “Why is there text or an abstract painting here and a traditional comic page there?” I challenge you to consider how a comic book can uniquely tell one narrative through various devices. Consider how broad the comic book medium can be if it encapsulates techniques found in novels and paintings. When you read a book of mine, ask, “Is it a real pipe on the canvas, or is it just an artifice?”
Inspiration is universal. The connecting thread through all of my thoughts on art, comics, and abstract painting is that the capacities of abstraction and comics are limitless. Whatever you throw at them, both abstract art and comic books can take it and transmute it. They can transmute a film. They can transmute a memory. They can transmute anything.
Magritte posed that a painting of a pipe is not a pipe. On that point, I side with Jasper Johns. A depiction of a pipe is a pipe--if the writer and artist say so. Paint is never just paint--unless the writer and artist say so. If the writer and artist say paint is a trumpet, they are telling the truth. What is physically impossible is emotionally possible. The same desire or inspiration it takes to play a trumpet can be represented on a surface with paint. It can be described with words. Regardless, what is present before the artist and the reader is a real, true trumpet.
What makes a trumpet a true trumpet: the brass that it is comprised of or the breath blowing through it? If the brass of a trumpet is replaced with paint or words, the breath that would have been blown through that trumpet has been captured. Ceci est une pipe. This is a pipe.
