The Cleveland Museum of Art (spacer)
Special Exhibitions 		(spacer) (separator) (spacer) (spacer)
Drawing Modern: Works from the Agnes Gund Collection 		(spacer)
(spacer)
  Drawing Modern: Works from the Agnes Gund Collection > Highlights of the Exhibition > Jasper Johns (American, born 1930) Savarin, 1977
 
 
Jasper Johns (American, born 1930)
Savarin, 1977
Pencil and crayon on plastic
37 x 32-1/4 inches

Jasper Johns (American, born 1930)
Savarin, 1977

In 1960, Jasper Johns cast in bronze a Savarin coffee can from his studio, along with the paintbrushes it held; he then assembled these parts and painted them to make a trompe l’oeil sculpture, evoking illusionistic reality. This object manifests a situation Johns has described as “a thing’s not being what it was, with its becoming something other than what it is, with any moment in which one identifies a thing precisely, and with the slipping away of that moment.”

In Savarin, Johns drew this sculpture, cast against the hatching motif that first appeared in his work in 1972—an important part of his vocabulary. This composition thus suggests the space of the artist’s studio, but in this self-referential work it also emphasizes the act of drawing, a practice central to Johns throughout his career. The sparseness and scale of these lines call attention to their character as drawn marks, a quality that represents the process of making art rather than one used to represent form.

Page 4 of 8 | On the next page: Ellsworth Kelly (American, born 1923)
Study for Spectrum I, 1953