Focal Points: Jasper Johns

How can we interpret the work of contemporary artists? First released in 2024, Focal Points is a book series of essays, articles and reviews by acclaimed curator and critic Robert Storr. Expertly edited by art historian and curator Francesca Pietropaolo, and richly illustrated, it lends Storr’s illuminating insights into an artist’s practice and way of thinking across recent decades. Brilliantly scholarly, accessible and engaging, Focal Points offers fresh interpretations of the varied territory of modern and contemporary art.

This volume gathers, for the first time, Storr’s writings on the work of American painter Jasper Johns (b.1930). An artist internationally recognised for his encaustic paintings of flags, targets and maps, Johns’s ‘Neo-Dada’ works helped to formalise a shift in postwar American art, moving away from Abstract Expressionism and towards Pop art. Storr’s essays and articles provide a unique look at Johns’s practice and its continuing relevance. As Pietropaolo notes in her introduction, ‘Together, these writings … encapsulate Storr’s process of close looking at and prolonged thinking about Johns’s art, the result of a longstanding engagement that started back in the late 1960s … when he first met the artist in New York.’

• 'A book that balances scholarly rigour with accessible prose, making it essential for seasoned art historians and those newly drawn to Johns' enigmatic world. In an era of fleeting interpretations, Focal Points reminds us that great criticism, like great art, demands time, patience, and curiosity.' - Artlyst

• 'Nobody has played the game of the art world better than Jasper Johns' - Robert Storr, in The Art Newspaper's The Week in Art

Robert Storr is an art critic, curator and painter. He has written widely on art and has interviewed some of the world’s leading artists. Storr’s writing has appeared in countless books and exhibition catalogues as well as in Art in America, Artforum, Parkett and ARTnews. He has curated exhibitions internationally and was the first North American curator of the Venice Biennale in 2007. His bestselling Interviews on Art (2017), Writings on Art 1980–2005 (2020) and Writings on Art 2006–2021 (2021) were published by HENI.Francesca Pietropaolo is an Italian art historian of modern and contemporary art, a critic, and an independent curator. She has worked at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. As an art critic, she has written widely, including for Art Press, Brooklyn Rail, Mediascapes, Flash Art International, ARTnews, Art in America and Arte e Critica.

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