Jasper Johns lecture

Just came back from the Met. I attended the Jasper Johns public lecture there today. I must say that I am bitterly disappointed.

I am fascinated by Jasper Johns, both in terms of his personality and his work-philosophy. I scour over any book or articles I can find regarding his thoughts and visions. Yet this lecture bored me to tears. The first one about the form-meaning relationship of Jasper Johns' work was alright. A little dry, but there were quite a few interesting interpretation of his work which allowed some interesting and novel perspectives upon his works I previously glossed over. The second lecture on Jasper Johns, titled "Gray is my favorite color", given by a famous Harvard alumni with a degree in arts was simply horrible. The problem wasn't that it was too hard to follow or too far away into the realms of professional nomenclature. The problem was that there wasn't any content. The doctor droned on and on about his personal feelings for the work of Jasper Johns while listing bunch of lackluster theories on his works with the depth of cheap art analysis text books for an hour and a half. I believe about half of his lecture was composed of "uh", "ahhh", and "ehh." I actually had to tear at my hair to keep myself from falling asleep, and I am used to my fair share of mind-numbingly boring classes. This is something I don't ever want to go through again.

The highlight of the lecture series was the panel discussion between the museum curators about what they've learned while working with Jasper Johns' work. Quite interesting stuff. Nothing with too much depth, but one cannot expect much in public lectures I guess (the lecture on Poussin's landscape series a few days ago, however, was amazing, which leads me to believe that today's lector was simply sub-par). Interesting comparison on Jasper Johns' past and present works and techniques and manifestations of his philosophy were shared. I am a little too tired right now. I'll share the details on the lecture and Jasper Johns in general with you after I catch some sleep.