Catalog for the exhibition "Jasper Johns: 'Something Resembling Truth'" at Royal Academy of Arts, London, 23 September-10 December 2017, and The Broad, Los Angeles, 10 February-13 May 2018.

"This lavishly illustrated retrospective of Jasper Johns's work offers a new perspective on the artist's work based on his own enduring fascination with mirroring and doubles"--

Text by Thomas Crow.

Johns’ drawings are distinctive in part for his use of several techniques in the same work (including freehand drawing tracing and imprinting) as well as for his superb handling of a variety of media, including graphite pencil, charcoal, pen and ink, pastel and watercolour. While his drawings are intimately connected with his paintings and prints, they are not necessarily produced in preparation for other works - often they are a way of refocusing attention on the subjects of the paintings, to provoke new thoughts about the images. This fascinating and beautifully illustrated study casts new light on one of America’s most important contemporary artists.

This monograph reproduces sculptures and works on paper completed over the last five years by Jasper Johns (born 1930), who in February 2011 became the first visual artist to receive a Presidential Medal of Honor since 1977. The sculptures, cast in bronze, aluminum and silver from wax originals, feature Johns' signature number grid and the impressions of various objects and textures, such as choreographer Merce Cunningham's foot. The recent works on paper include a series of drawings and prints based on three small works Johns made early in 2010 on Shrinky Dinks (a plastic made for children to draw on, which shrinks when heated). Color plates are accompanied by a conversation between Johns and fellow artist Terry Winters, which takes Johns' newest works as the starting point for a broader discussion of his artistic practice.

After completing the installation of his 1996 retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art, Jasper Johns retreated to his studio in Connecticut to wipe the slate clean, beginning a body of work that was a dramatic departure from anything he had made before. This volume reproduces for the first time the complete series of those magnificent works that Johns, one of our greatest living artists, has made over the last eight years.The first painting in this new series included a string hanging from upper right to lower left, generating a curve called a "catenary," and this curve became the compositional backbone of the entire series. Johns produced a total of 61 paintings, drawings and prints based on the catenary theme, all of which are reproduced in this volume. The work is saturated with autobiographical references, both transparent and opaque, while it simultaneously encourages multiple layers of meaning. Sensual surfaces, fragile constructions, and formal rigor meet allusions to key moments in the history of modern art and motifs from Johns's earlier work. The poetry of Johns's catenary series is explored in an illustrated essay by the scholar Scott Rothkopf, published alongside the catalogue's 51 color plates.