Jasper Johns’ P ain ted B ron ze
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complicated process. ''Parts were done by casting, parts by building up from scratch,
parts by molding, breaking and then restoring. I was definitely making it ditficult
to tell how it was made,” the artist observed.
The sculpture was then cast in bronze, reworked when it came back from
the foundry, and finally painted (Johns 192). The procedure followed what would
become Johns’ famous dictum, "Take an object, do something to it, do something
else to it.” (qtd. in Albrecht 162-63)
Roberta Bernstein interviewed the artist for her dissertation and offered
this explanation of the media and the subject matter of Painted Bronze: "Johns
used the Ballantine Ale Cans most likely because it was a personal favorite, but
also because of the simplicity of the can’s label design and because of its bronze
colors, which imitates the traditional sculptor’s material Johns used” (Bernstein
122). For Johns, the cans were studio objects as well as commercial forms since he
used empty beer cans for mixing painf .
In her conversation with the artist Bernstein also learned that one of the
original cans remained in Johns’ studio. As she noted: "Johns told me that one of
the original ale can models was lost or stolen; he still has the closed one” (Bernstein
45, 223). The fate of the opened can helped illustrate that the two cans in the
sculpture, measuring 5 '/: x 4 inches, could be separated because they were cast
separately and could be lifted off the base. Pointing to differences between the
two, Bernstein observed the open can was hollow and light in weight and contrasted
with the solid bronze closed can which was heavy (Bernstein 54). Kozloff
commented on the two cans when he noted that the ale "appears to have been
emptied from one punctured can and never to have entered its totally solid
composition in Painted Bronze, 1960.”^
A similar phenomenological reading of the sculpture was offered by
Andrew Forge:
We don’t see real cans 'through’ the sculpture. How could we
— which beer cans would we choose? Nor do we see an
organization of cylinders and cubes. What we see is precisely
the thing in front of us, an object which appears incredibly to
resemble a beer can, but which is ultimately itself an absurd
object, (qtd. in Kozloff 31)
Irving Sandler examined the relationship between the art and its popular referent
when he argued that Johns was concerned with ".. .the definition of art and not art:
'real’ objects and 'art’ objects; with the connection of verbal and visual images...of
what is conceptualized and what is seen, that is, with the complex and ambiguous
process of experiencing art.”^