On Cotter on Johns

Holland Cotter description of Jasper John’s work in today’s New York Times includes the following:

“Like Donne’s poetry, Mr. John’s art is equally about body and mind, sensuality and reflection. It is unmystical, unromantic, unnostalgic, but obsessed with transcendence and the reality of loss…Metaphor, rather than statement or confession, is their method.”

Ideal! If I attain this balance in my own work, than I feel like I will have reached one of the great possibilities of art.

In a recent portrait of John’s in The New Yorker, he is revealed to be an unhurried artist, attuned to his own development, mostly unswayed by critics and trend. Now, that implies confidence! Oh where, oh how!