MoMA to show new work by Jasper Johns

A work in Jasper Johns’s “Regrets” series, from last year. The works will be on display at MoMA beginning on March 15. Credit Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York

New York’s Museum of Modern Art will exhibit a new suite of paintings, etchings and drawings by 83-year-old artist Jasper Johns from March 15 to September 1, 2014, reports the New York Times.  The Regrets series is based on a Christie’s auction catalogue image of a John Deakin photograph of a young Lucian Freud once owned by Francis Bacon.  According to the article: “Over the years, Bacon took that photograph of Freud on the bed and folded it, tore it and creased it until a pronounced dark patch dominated its foreground.” Johns’ works are abstractions derived from the auction catalogue image.

The article continues:

Last summer, Ann Temkin, chief curator in the Museum of Modern Art’s painting and sculpture department, and Christophe Cherix, the museum’s chief curator of drawings and prints, made separate visits to Mr. Johns’s studio, where they first saw many examples of “Regrets.”

“Our jaws dropped,” Ms. Temkin recalled.

Not everything was finished, but that didn’t matter. The curators decided the museum had to show the series as soon as possible. The result is“Jasper Johns: Regrets,” which will be displayed from March 15 through Sept. 1 in a drawings gallery on the third floor.

The curators were also determined to acquire as much of the series as possible for the museum’s collection. At last count, MoMA has either been promised or been given eight works in the show — two etchings, four ink-on-plastic drawings, a watercolor and a painting — by museum supporters.