 | Among these is Painting Bitten by a Man, which looks a lot like John Pasche's 1971 "tongue and lip" logo for the Rolling Stones, often misattributed to Andy Warhol. Here the encaustic is so thick and drippy it resembles cake frosting, and maybe that inspired Johns to take a real bite out of it. The painting is quite small, roughly 9 inches by 7, and oddly luminous. It's also sensuous. The joking title is probably meant to hide these qualities. To me, the picture is among the most moving in the whole exhibition, a lonely cry for love, and I can see why Johns held on to it. The picture is painted on a type plate, the kind of thing that used to hold typeface letters for printing. Weiss thinks this is another of Johns' attempts to reduce painting to quasi-mechanical operations. |  |
Jasper Johns, Painting Bitten by a Man, 1961 © Jasper Johns/licensed by VAGA, New York. Image courtesy the artist and National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. |
|  |