Prints & Multiples

Published and printed by Universal Limited Art Editions, West Islip, New York, with their blindstamp

Lot Note:

Jasper Johns stands as a crucial bridge between Abstract Expressionism and the emergence of Pop and Minimal art, with printmaking central to his practice. Treated not as secondary but as an equal partner to painting and drawing, the medium allows for repetition, variation, and reinvention. This approach is powerfully realized in Regrets, a cohesive body of paintings, drawings, and prints developed over an eighteen-month period and presented at The Museum of Modern Art in Jasper Johns: Regrets. The imagery originates from a 1964 photograph of Lucian Freud by John Deakin, later reproduced in a 2012 auction catalogue. Depicting Freud seated with his head bowed, the image’s torn and weathered condition contributes to its emotional charge, qualities Johns amplifies through mirroring and fragmentation. The resulting composition, with its off-centered doubling, forms a dominant central shape often likened to a tombstone, while fractured elements above suggest a skull, invoking themes of mortality and reflection.

Developed through earlier drawings and paintings, the Regrets prints were executed with master printer John Lund and editioned at Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), where Johns employed traditional etching techniques to achieve rich tonal variation, mark-making, and erasure across two plates. While Regrets marks the first instance of an entire body of work based on a single photographic source, it remains consistent with his broader practice: an ongoing exploration of how images evolve through repetition, transformation, and time.