0-9

"I'm certainly not putting the numbers to any use, numbers are used all the time, and what's being done is making something to be looked at" (J. Johns as quoted in M. Kozloff, New York, 1967, p. 18).

Drafted in concurrence with one of his most esteemed series, Number Drawing 0-9 is a paragon of Jasper Johns artistic use of sign and symbol. Numbers, in particular, were the perfect subject matter for Johns, an artist who was looking for subjects disguised with as vernacular but not devoid of meaning. As characters, numbers signify what exists abstractly in the mind, but not concretely. Though they first appeared in his work as a small part in a larger composition in 1954, by 1955, they became the primary subjects of a series of works. In particular, the two-tiered grouping of numbers 01234 and 56789 existent in the present lot, were first used by the artist in three paintings from 1958-59, one white, one gray and one multi-colored. At this time, Johns often explored the duality of color vs. its absence, investigating how multiple paintings of the same subject can be perceived in drastically different ways. Gifted as a birthday present for Abstract Expressionist Paul Jenkins, born appropriately in 1923, as symbolized by the act of erasing all of the numbers except for 2 and 3, Number Drawing 0-9 is a representation of both the artist's involvement with his contemporaries and his impact on the history of art.

In the case of the present lot, executed from 1963-66 in pencil on paper, Johns rendering of absence is not in color, but the process of removal itself. Here, the artist’s hand has incisively drawn out integers 0-9 and methodically returned to the majority with an eraser, leaving us with graphite ghosts of numerical stencils in their frames and a defiantly worked ‘23’. Of course, one cannot mention the act of erasure and Jasper Johns without his titular role in Robert Rauschenberg’s scandalous act of erasing a drawing by Willem de Kooning in 1953. One of the most venerated artists in his day, Willem de Kooning famously consented to the project over a bottle of Jack Daniels, and even went out of his way to give Rauschenberg a highly finished piece. Though it was agreed, the destruction of the drawing – or celebration, in Rauschenberg’s words, shocked the art world, calling into question the limits of art and the role of the artist. Taking a cue from Marcel Duchamp, Johns famously helped Rauschenberg with the gilded frame and integral inscription “ERASED de KOONING DRAWING, ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, 1953”. Though when one confronts Erased de Kooning, the viewer is challenged with what the artist has left behind; in the present work by Jasper Johns, the viewer is invited to consider what remains. Gifted as a birthday present for Abstract Expressionist Paul Jenkins, born appropriately in 1923, Number Drawing 0-9 is a symbol of the artist’s contribution to the history of art.