Voilà. In tracing what he calls the "internal logic" of Johns' art, National Gallery curator Jeffrey Weiss notes that he progressed from painting targets to using a mechanical, target-making "device." This was Johns' word for the yardsticks and other straightedges that he screwed to the wooden support and used like a compass to scrape circular expanses of paint. Good Time Charley, in the doleful signature gray that came to dominate many of Johns' most affecting paintings, demonstrates how a seemingly mechanical procedure can have unexpected emotional results. The scraped expanse of paint is more evocative than the splotchy remainder of the picture. The inverted tin cup, with its ironic inscription, implies poverty and need. The whole contraption looks like a bell. It tolls for thee. For those open to a possible biographical agenda for this grim image, Johns' intense relationship with Robert Rauschenberg, which began in 1954, collapsed in 1961, the year in which Johns painted this and several other memorably melancholy works.