National Gallery of Art showcases Johns’ ‘Proof’ of life

But seriously folks, this Jasper Johns exhibit at the National Gallery of Art until springtime really hits the target. The target is but one of many motifs to which the pioneering American painter and printmaker has pledged allegiance several times during his long career. “Editions With Additions: Working Proofs by Jasper Johns” is a fascinating chronicle of his obsessions, showing us how he works them out, iteration by minute iteration. As curated by Ruth Fine, the show floats the idea that its 40 print-drawing hybrids are not merely studies for future prints, but in fact independent, self-contained statements — even if Johns didn’t intend for them to be shown publicly at the time he made them.

Well, why not? These are boom times for how-to, DVD commentary tracks and double-disc CD re-reissues of classic albums, featuring the primitive four-track demos of the tunes we love. We want to see how the sausage is made, and we want the tell-all about the documentary of the making of the behind-the-scenes featurette.

Johns turns out to be a particularly rewarding artist on whom to peel back the curtain, and not just because the material is there. (The NGA says it has more Johns in its vaults than any other institution.) Johns’ work has always reflected the belief he shared with media theorist Marshall McLuhan: “The medium is the message.” A bull’s-eye rendered in chalk, watercolor and graphite meant something different to him than a screen-printed bull’s-eye detailed with ink and collage. Changing the size of the piece, too, changes its meaning. Although you can see the ancestors of more familiar Johns works here, the attraction here is not so much the lineage of individual pieces as it is a peek into the artist’s mind.

“Editions With Additions” is the second exhibit to be cultivated from the archive of 1,700 of Johns’ preliminary works on paper that the NGA began acquiring early in 2007. The show’s two galleries present the pieces chronologically, from 1962’s “False Start I” up through three untitled etchings from 1997.

The first room, dedicated to pieces from the 1960s and ’70s, shows us Johns’ debt to forebears like Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso. Though both two generations older than Johns, they remained active during his lifetime (even if Duchamp was active mainly at chess). In the second gallery, devoted to his 1980s and ’90s material, an entire wall of prints pays homage to Hans Holbein, a German artist whose career predates Johns’ by about four centuries. Otherwise, Johns’ work became more autobiographical in this later period, incorporating elements such as his own shadow, blueprints of his grandfather’s home and family snapshots.

In 2007, the NGA mounted “States and Variations: Prints by Jasper Johns.” There will be more, the gallery promises. If they’re all this good, we’re ready.