Jasper Johns at the Phillips and Abroad

Bill Goldston talks to visitors in the galleries

Bill Goldston talks to visitors in front of Johns’s work, Untitled (2011), on July 12, 2012. Photo: Benjamin Resine

In 1960, Jasper Johns was introduced to printmaking by Tatyana Grosman, who in 1957 founded Universal Limited Art Editions, a fine art publishing house in Long Island, New York. Grosman invited artists like Johns to her workshop to learn lithography. Master printer Bill Goldston met Johns there and collaborated with him on major works such as Decoy (1971) on view in the exhibition Jasper Johns: Variations on a Theme at The Phillips Collection.

Goldston became the director of ULAE in 1982 and he continues to work with Johns and other artists. He considers Johns’s recent print Untitled (2011) a tour de force in etching: “John Lund [Johns’s master printer] told me that the whole thing is spit bite [a process in which an acid solution is painted directly on a prepared plate]. . . . You have to marvel at Jasper: there are 11 colors printed from only three plates. You print the multicolored blue plate, then the red and yellow plate, and finally the black plate. What you need is timing—you don’t want the blue plate or red plate to dry fully or else the black won’t print cleanly. . . . It is extraordinary that an artist possesses the technical foresight in etching something like this.”

Goldston, who spoke at the Phillips last night about his work with Johns, recently curated an exhibition of Johns prints at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in Brazil.

New Works from Old Plates

Jasper Johns, Untitled (Black with Primaries), 1991

Jasper Johns, Untitled (Black with Primaries), 1991. Intaglio, 42 x 78 in. Published by Universal Limited Art Editions. John and Maxine Belger Foundation © Jasper Johns and ULAE / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

“The grand etching Untitled (Black with Primaries) (1991), created with copper plates he had used 10 years earlier, demonstrates Johns’s inclination to use the materials of printmaking to interpret imagery in new ways.” Learn more about Jasper Johns: Variations on a Theme here, and visit the show on view now until September 9.