Creative destruction
Peeling back the layers of Jasper Johns’ cancellation proofs.
Cancellation proofs are little-known, seldom displayed, and incredibly rare in museums and galleries. Amazingly, the NGA’s Kenneth Tyler Print Collection holds over 40 examples of cancellation proofs, as well as candid photography documenting the process. In the NGA’s collection, Martin Lubliner’s photographs of Jasper Johns’ unique approach to cancellation proofs provide fascinating insight into the work of this important American artist.
A cancellation proof is a print created from a defaced printing matrix. By demonstrating that no further identical prints can be made, each proof provides assurance that a ‘limited edition’ is truly is limited. When a matrix is cancelled, the image will usually be defaced with a simple cross, strike or the word ‘void’, and a single cancellation proof will then be created.
Jasper Johns’ work radically defies this convention. His collaborator, master printer Kenneth Tyler, recalls, ‘Johns was the first and only artist I worked with that made multiple cancellation proofs that he laboured on as if making a monotype.’ This obscure aspect of Johns’ work is barely ever acknowledged and the cancellation prints themselves are rare and difficult to locate. Luckily, in the NGA’s collection two candid photographs by Malcolm Lubliner provide a rare glimpse into Johns’ creative method.
A photograph of one of two cancellation proofs created for the work Figure 7 from Johns’ 1968 Color numerals series contains a thick strike that erases a horizontal line across the image. The strike slashes through the mouth of his photo-reproduction of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The word ‘VOID’ is scratched beneath this mark.
By adding these symbols, Johns introduces new ideas rather than eradicating old ones. In doing so, he asks the viewer to question the meaning of ‘void’. At the same time, Johns also fulfils the requirements of cancellation, albeit in an unexpected way.
A similar approach is seen in Lubliner’s photograph documenting the cancellation of his print No 1969. In this image, the artist has inscribed ‘VOID’ over the top of the word ‘No’ from the original composition. In this case, the cancellation has created a double negative — the word ‘No’ is declared ‘void’. Or is it? Once again, Johns explores the ambiguity of how the cancellation process changes the work of art with which it interacts.
Johns subverted the idea that the purpose of cancellation is to guarantee the value and rarity of an edition. In doing so, he produced something even rarer than the edition itself: proof that destruction can be a creative act.
Alice Desmond
