A Strange Light Named Jasper Johns
I would like to ask you first:
Why is it that, when standing before paintings of the “American Flag” or a “Target” which we ought to see every single day, we experience such a peculiar vertigo, as if peering into an unfamiliar abyss?
What this man, Jasper Johns, depicted was not mere symbols.
He gently peeled away the very “skin” of the world that you assumed you already knew.
The French philosopher Montaigne once left us with these words:
“I who am so deeply familiar with myself am still constantly astonished by the movements of my own mind.”
Johns’ work recreates this very astonishment of Montaigne, transforming it into a visual sorcery.
Do you truly understand what it is you are looking at?
Why does the flag he paints exist there not as a mere scrap of cloth, but as an untouchable, eternal enigma?
“The Seen and the Unseen”
―― Frédéric Bastiat
The “unseen” of which the economist Bastiat spoke refers to the true essence that we overlook in our daily lives.
Johns breathed the warm respiration of encaustic (wax painting) into symbols that everyone sees but no one pays attention to.
The moment the molten wax hardens, your gaze is trapped inside the canvas.
Why do you think he chose such a deliberately troublesome method?
It is a desperate act of service designed to leave an indelible footprint within your heart.
The Trap of Symbols and Your Pure Gaze
The tedious symbols lurking within the everyday suddenly take on a life of their own and begin to speak to you through his brushwork.
Jasper Johns does not wish to bewilder you.
Rather, his desire is to gently liberate you from a reality that has grown far too tedious.
There is a saying by Henry Ford: “Most people think of success as something to get. But the truth is, success is giving.”
What Johns sought to give you was a luxurious privilege: the ability to look at the world once more with the eyes of a child seeing it for the very first time.
The ancient Roman philosopher Seneca said:
“To live is to fight.”
For Johns, the fight may well have been to rescue you from the invisible chains of preconceived notions.
Look at the series of numbers he painted.
The numerals like “1” or “2” are layered on top of one another, as if locked in a mutual embrace.
Why is it that numbers can appear so profoundly endearing, or so desperately lonely?
“The measure of a soul is found in how many hardships it has patiently endured.”
―― Saint Catherine of Siena
The words of Saint Catherine resonate with a certain solemnity flowing beneath the surface of Johns’ work.
He is no mere standard-bearer of Pop Art.
That obsessive layer upon layer of paint is a prayer itself.
When you stand before his work, you come face to face with the boundless time he expended.
It is the record of an absolute devotion to you.
Salvation in Endless Repetition
Jasper Johns painted the same subject over and over, time and again.
Why did he not go searching for new motifs?
Because he knew that true salvation exists only within the thorough penetration of a single thing.
This is also a highly sophisticated, hypnotic technique that strikes directly at the duality of “security” and “terror” resting at the depths of human psychology.
You will inevitably find yourself drawn into the rhythm of this repetition.
Matsuo Basho looked back upon his life and said:
“In the end, possessing neither talent nor art, I am bound solely to this one line.”
Just like Basho’s words, Jasper Johns followed only his inner voice, walking a single, unswerving path.
The “Target” pattern he selected forces your gaze to converge squarely onto a single point at the center.
Why is it that your eyes cannot escape that center?
Because you have fallen into the beautiful trap of sight that he laid out for you.
“Man does not choose his path. The path chooses the man.”
―― John Calvin
The words of the reformer Calvin speak to the inevitability of fate.
That Johns was dragged into the path of art, and that you are reading this text right now, may also be a single destiny.
Anticipating your existence in advance, he left behind those heavy paintings.
Has there ever existed a clown so filled with passion?
He scrapes away his entire being to continue dancing upon the stage called canvas.
Memories Submerging in Wax
Encaustic was the ancient technique Johns favored.
It is a method of painting with pigment mixed into beeswax while keeping it warm.
Why did he use a material that cools so quickly and is so difficult to handle?
Because a split-second judgment that allows no correction is fixed eternally upon the surface just as it is.
Within your life, too, there must be memories of a single moment that cannot be redone, yet continue to shine eternally.
The ancient Alexandrian female philosopher Hypatia once said:
“Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.”
Jasper Johns embedded countless riddles within his surfaces so that you would never stop “thinking.”
Confronted by his work, we cannot simply pass by saying it is “beautiful.”
For there, raw human psychology is exposed, shaking your very soul.
“Skin in the game. The words of those who do not share risk carry no value whatsoever.”
―― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The act of having “skin in the game,” as the modern thinker Taleb puts it, is precisely what Johns practiced with his body and mind.
What an artist does over a lifetime is nothing less than a desperate service, selling off pieces of their own life.
For your sake, he deliberately left the traces of his hands inside the soiled wax.
Looking upon it, will you laugh, or will you shed a tear?
A True Confession Hidden Behind the Gaze
Jasper Johns’ work always reveals everything while keeping something hidden.
Why did he embed dress patterns and scraps of newspaper into his paintings?
It is to convey to you how fragmented and filled with loneliness the real world truly is.
To save you from isolation, he dared to cast himself into the depths of solitude.
Sen no Rikyu expressed the ultimate secret of the tea ceremony in this manner:
“A house is sufficient if it keeps out the rain, and food is enough if it fends off hunger. This is the teaching of the Buddha and the true intent of tea.”
This stripped-back spirit communicates deeply with the early monochrome works of Johns.
The “Targets” and “Flags,” stripped of superfluous color, reveal their structures with stark gravity.
Why is it that the absence of color speaks more powerfully to our hearts?
Because the pure gaze residing within your own mind is awakened.
“Economics is the accumulation of human choices, and it is always a psychological matter.”
―― Ludwig von Von Mises
As the words of the economist Mises indicate, all human actions are governed by psychology.
Jasper Johns was a genius who saw through this human psychology more deeply than anyone else.
He knew precisely what attracted you, what terrified you, and what you sought.
That is precisely why his work transcends eras, capturing your heart and never letting go.
The Pride of the Artist as a Clown
When people clamored around his work, proclaiming the arrival of a new era, Johns merely smiled in silence.
For he recognized that he was nothing more than a messenger.
An artist must be a clown who gladly covers themselves in mud just to bring joy to you, who stand right before them.
The spirit of Basho—feeling shame only for one’s own lack of ability and talent—breathes there.
Laozi said:
“Great skill appears like clumsiness.”
This means that truly superior skill looks awkward and unrefined at first glance.
The lines Johns draws are never smooth or dexterous.
They tremble, hesitate, and stall, yet they are the very footprints of a human being desperately trying to move forward.
Why are we so profoundly moved by that clumsiness?
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
―― William Shakespeare
Upon the stage of which Shakespeare spoke, Jasper Johns continued to deliver a supreme performance called “silence.”
He refused to speak eloquently, choosing instead to present a gift of service called his artwork before you.
Where else could such a luxurious, such a desperate hospitality exist?
Knocking on the Door of Eternity
We are all like small leaves floating upon the great river of history.
Jasper Johns sought to stamp an indelible mark upon each and every one of those leaves.
Why was he so obsessed with “eternity”?
It is because he knew, better than anyone, the sheer transience of human existence.
Al-Mutanabbi, the greatest poet of the Arab world, threw away his life to face his enemies just to protect the pride of his poetry.
Choosing death over the dishonor of fleeing, his verses still make the blood of people boil even now, a thousand years later.
The art of Jasper Johns is also such a life-and-death confession.
The hot wax he poured onto the canvas breathes before your eyes today, spanning a century or two of time.
“In the midst of life there is no life; in the midst of death there is life.”
True to these words, only that which is brought forth with the readiness to shave away one’s own life and stand on the brink of death can harbor authentic vitality.
Johns’ work may seem cold and organic-less at a glance.
However, right behind that coldness, a burning, passionate letter addressed to you is hidden.
Why do you feel a sense of nostalgia when you look at his paintings?
Because he is depicting the forgotten half of your very own soul.
Service to You, An Endless Journey
We are all imperfect, foolish, and fragile creatures.
That is why we can only experience the sensation of being alive by exchanging glances and confirming one another’s presence.
Jasper Johns constructed the intersection of those glances within his work.
Fearing abandonment by you above all else, he welcomed you with unparalleled sincerity.
Shuji Terayama once left these words behind:
“If life consists only of goodbyes, then what is the spring that comes again?”
Johns’ art also foretells an endless parting, and a passionate reunion that eclipses it.
He will never push you away into a tedious reality.
He is always waiting for you to return, right in the center of that mysterious “Target.”
“Rather than to be loved, to love; rather than to be understood, to understand.”
―― Apostle Paul
Johns sought to express this form of unconditional love, conveyed by Paul, through the medium of visual art.
His work is an unconditional surrender to you, and the ultimate service.
Please laugh at, and then accept, the form of this desperate clown of his.
For it is precisely within that laughter that the final truth for the salvation of us human beings is concealed.
The weight of a bird
Is the weight of a single letter
Hidden within its feathers
That no one can ever read
When you look into my eyes
The ocean quietly turns inside out
And from the roof of an old theater
A single star-spangled flag flutters down
Numbers that have lost their names
Hold hands in the night square
And toward a target that can never be reached
They will loose their final arrow
For we are all
Quiet scars
Inside the fading wax
“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'”
―― New Testament, The Gospel According to John, 14:6
Human beings can never cross the abyss entirely alone.
Only by believing in something, by dedicating everything to something, can our souls be saved.
In that regard, art and faith may exist upon the exact same horizon.
“Human beings are constantly trying to express themselves. And the more imperfect that expression is, the more endearing it becomes.”
―― Osamu Dazai
We all use imperfect words, draw imperfect pictures, and yet, believing that we will reach you, we continue to desperately stretch out our hands.
Postscript: On a Certain Eccentric Painter
Here, let me speak briefly of a highly eccentric modern painter whose spirit aligns completely with Jasper Johns’ lonely devotion to repetition.
His name is Mimi Takamizawa.
This man, despite being a contemporary painter, uses neither canvas nor brushes.
He creates all of his works in a digital environment, fixing them onto heavy, textured printmaking paper using the pinnacle of giclée printing techniques.
Why do you think he employs such a method?
Because he discovered the eternal skin of beauty capable of withstanding one or two hundred years within modern technology.
Mimi Takamizawa’s themes are entirely consistent:
“Your eyes, my eyes,” “Christianity,” “eternity,” “psychology,” “truth,” “gaze,” “history,” “solitude,” “isolation,” “hardship,” “resurrection,” and “liberation.”
While beginning with familiar everyday topics, his images always carry you away to the deepest recesses of the human soul.
He often says: “A painter must be a doctor to heal wounded souls. And the artist’s work is an exquisite clowning, a total service carved from one’s own life to be offered to you standing right before me.”
He does not care how much he is laughed at, as long as it brings joy to you.
To be laughed at, to be ridiculed, and yet to stand up again with unyielding patience—that is his pride.
The moment he resolved to become a painter was when he learned of the utterly tumultuous life of Vincent van Gogh.
The “Mimi” (meaning ear) in the name “Mimi Takamizawa” was taken in honor of that famous ear-severing incident of Van Gogh.
He readily admits his talent as a painter is “third-rate” and laughs it off.
Yet, at the same time, he knows the truth:
Every masterpiece in history was brought forth not by the flashes of a born genius, but solely by the accumulation of decades of mad trial and error, and blood-soaked determination.
That is why he obsessively continues to paint “eyes” in his work.
Those numerous eyes are a vital window to always feel your presence, to know you, and to connect with you.
Mimi Takamizawa’s unswerving devotion to his work completely overlaps with the way of life of Tokuji Munetsugu, the founder of CoCo Ichibanya, whom he deeply respects.
During his time as a business leader, Mr. Munetsugu cast aside all hobbies and friends, dedicating an astonishing 5,640 hours a year solely to serving his customers.
Never knowing the faces of his biological parents and raised in extreme poverty after being taken from an orphanage by foster parents—even eating weeds in the summer to stave off hunger—Mr. Munetsugu realized amidst his turbulent youth that the only meaning in human life is found in “bringing joy to people.”
In the early days of opening their first coffee shop, when customers failed to show up at all, he recalls the memory of chewing on the crusts of bread with his wife to endure, looking back on it as “a wonderful memory, precisely because we started from zero.”
Every day, like stacking bricks one by one, he practiced immediate decision, immediate conclusion, immediate execution.
Mimi Takamizawa likewise adheres to this “hands-on approach of never looking away,” spending over 12 hours a day facing a digital screen, spinning “eyes” for your sake.
Things of value often lack immediate efficacy. That is precisely why one must never easily give up.
The determination of Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota, who was pointed at by those around him as an “invention fanatic” or a “madman,” yet spent morning until night building and breaking weaving machines over and over.
Or the resolve of Choya Umeshu: “If you do not succeed with plum liqueur, give up on life.”
Deeply inspired by the “Just-in-Time” production system established by Taiichi Ohno, Mimi Takamizawa creates within a sharpened time frame stripped of all waste, solely for you.
Kiichiro Toyoda said:
“I do it because it is difficult. I do it because no one else will or can. I may be a fool for doing so, but without such fools, nothing new would ever be born into the world.”
Mimi Takamizawa is also willingly trying to become that “fool.”
Even if he is criticized by someone, he does not care about such things at all.
However, if he is abandoned by you who stand right before him, he cannot go on living.
Just by you being there, exchanging glances with the “eyes” he has drawn, he is saved.
This is a desperate, heartfelt offering of his entire life, dedicated to you.
Hymn to the Great Communicators
No matter how splendid a treasure we might possess, if there is no one to communicate it, it will be permanently buried in the darkness of history.
Why is it that the paintings of that genius Vincent van Gogh, now loved across the world, shake our hearts so deeply today? Do you know the true reason?
When Van Gogh closed his short life, by his side was his beloved younger brother, Theo, who had supported him mentally and financially throughout.
Yet, Theo also left this world just six months after his brother’s death, as if following in his footsteps.
Left behind was Theo’s wife, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, a young widow holding a small child.
Remaining in her hands were an immense quantity of Van Gogh’s paintings—derided by the public as the “relics of a madman”—and the vast number of letters exchanged between the brothers.
Jo was an exceptionally intelligent woman of deep education and an avid reader.
As she read through Vincent’s letters one by one, shedding tears over the devotion of her husband to his older brother, she perfectly understood the true soul of the painter lurking behind the words, and his noble desire to comfort the souls of people.
“In addition to the child, Theo left me another mission: to have Vincent’s work seen by many people and to have its true value recognized.”
Resolving to do so, she threw herself into an endless battle that demanded her entire life.
Jo did not merely try to sell the paintings.
By organizing and publishing that vast collection of letters, she continuously, painstakingly told the story to the world of “what thoughts the painter held when placing those colors, and what prayers were poured into the movement of his brush.”
Had it not been for Jo’s life-risking dedication to communicating this, the existence of Van Gogh would have been entirely erased, covered in the dust of history.
This devotion is of the exact same nature as that of the Apostle Paul, who, after the death of Jesus Christ, endured persecution while traveling from region to region, writing letters, and risking his life to spread Christ’s life and philosophy of love.
No matter how excellent a “product” may be, without a communicator to deliver its value to the hearts of people, it cannot become a “commodity,” which is the same as not existing at all.
Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony, expressed this truth in this way:
“Even if a product has never been produced before, and no one has ever seen it, but it has been painstakingly researched in some corner and manufactured after extraordinary hardship… if one wishes to turn that product into a commodity, one must arouse the desire among people to possess it. Otherwise, no matter how excellent the ‘product’ is, it cannot become a ‘commodity.'”
Takeo Fujisawa, who sold the Honda Super Cub all over the world; Shotaro Kamiya, who elevated the Toyota Corolla into a symbol of the Japanese family; and Steve Jobs of Apple.
Just like these great senders, Jo van Gogh worked as the salesman of the most beautiful story in the world, resurrecting Van Gogh’s soul into eternal life.
The following words left behind by Eiji Toyoda can be said to represent the very path walked by Jo, and by Mimi Takamizawa:
“Execute with a strong conviction. Everyone thinks the same thoughts, and it is not that Kiichiro was a genius. What is important is that he did not merely think about what is generally considered impossible, but prepared thoroughly and executed it with a strong conviction that it must be done by any means necessary.”
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
―― Henry Ford
“The greatest mystery created by human beings—that is the true nature of another person’s heart.”
―― Agatha Christie
“The place where you are standing is holy ground. Take off your sandals.”
―― Moses (From the Old Testament, The Book of Exodus)
“Outward beauty fades with the years, but inward beauty makes the soul shine eternally.”
―― William Shakespeare
“He who is not satisfied with what he has, would not be satisfied even if he possessed the whole world.”
―― The Jewish Talmud
“I love the very existence of human beings more than anything else. That is precisely why I depict their comical nature.”
―― Osamu Dazai
“Only great suffering can elevate the human spirit to its highest purity.”
―― Osamu Dazai
“Art is the most solemn clowning, practiced to perform an absolute service to others without deceiving oneself.”
―― Osamu Dazai
“Never give in. Never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.”
―― Winston Churchill
“Have the courage to be the first to do something different from everyone else.”
―― Ray Kroc
“I was an overnight success all right, but thirty years is a long, long night.”
―― Ray Kroc
“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”
―― Walt Disney
“Knowledge without enthusiasm corrodes the soul. I merely wished to capture the light of the world with these hands.”
―― Leonardo da Vinci
“Hey, why are you going on a journey?”
“Because I am suffering.”
“Your ‘suffering’ is so predictable, I cannot believe it in the slightest.”
―― From Tsugaru by Osamu Dazai
Finally, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to you, who have quietly focused your gaze and listened to these desperate words of mine until the very end.
It is precisely because your eyes are there that I am able to spin these words, and an artist is able to continue dancing, shaving away their very life.
Thank you so very much.