There is always this conflict in Johns, between the operatically expressive (cut, tear) and the extinction (scrape, erase) of personality. As another member of the cult of impersonality, T.S. Eliot, once wrote: "Only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things." Johns tends to make drawings after paintings, reversing the usual process, and some of his drawings, to my eye, are the most arresting expressions of this inner conflict. The small drawings he did of targets are a revelation; no larger than 6 inches square, they are lively, intense, and full of mystery. Unlike the primary colors of the painted targets, the drawings are monochrome: gray, green, white. They look like mandalas, or rubbings of Cambodian temple fragments. The target is almost invisible, pulsing in and out of focus as one looks at, or into, the image. There's a Zen feel to it, as though you yourself are dissolving into the target. "The hits on the target are only the outward proof and confirmation of your purposelessness at its highest, of your egolessness, your self-abandonment," the master tells his pupil in Eugen Herrigel's Zen in the Art of Archery. Close your eyes. See the target. The target is within you.