From The
Archives Of Second Change Cat Rescue- Jasper Johns Unchained
By Laura
Perkins
There was no
earthy reason to believe that once I started to “duel” with one Clarence Dewar,
art critic, professional art critic for Art Today (against my purely
amateur status proudly worn) around the genesis of modern artist Jasper Johns
work. I related the entirely possible story that one of his cats, one of his rescue
cats, you know second chance cast from some animal, shelter do way back when spilled some paint onto
the surface of a representational work he was doing and that wound up with a
little work keeping the piece which in term was one of his earliest attempts at
breaking into the abstract expressionist market. (Piping No. 4) Began to
see what guys like Jackson Pollack and Mark Rothko were getting at in the
nuclear age.
Look it is
well known that artists like writers, like singers “steal” from each other.
This is the genesis of Dewar’s scoffing at my story about little playful Jasper
being the inspiration for Johns’ movement away from representational art. He
claims, mouthing his mentor Clement Greenberg back in the day, that Johns was
influenced by some paintings he saw exhibited at the Nova Galleries in New York
City by a second wave of abstract artist like Roy LeRoi, May Devine, Louise
Hunter and Max Stern. Naturally I am happy to see Mr. Dewar get egg all over
his face since I have it on the word of one of Johns’ agents that the “cat
story” is true if not the only way he saw the road forward when he was stuck
for salable material. (See photograph below of "Jasper" when young and before he became a "muse")
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