Foirades/Fizzles, 1976

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In the elegant and enigmatic Foirades/Fizzles, Jasper Johns and Irish writer and poet Samuel Beckett joined forces to create one of the milestones of 20th-century artists’ books. Featuring five short prose texts, or “fizzles,” by Beckett and thirty-three original prints by Johns, the collaboration seamlessly merged the former’s austere writing style and concept of the fragmented individual with the latter’s sensual renderings of numerals, flagstones, crosshatchings, and parts of the human body. Johns’s imagery is based both on his repertoire of iconic motifs and on his monumental work Untitled (1972), a four-panel painting of fragmentary patterns that he had observed in the streets of New York City.

Details
Title
Foirades/Fizzles
Artist Life
born 1930
Role
Artist
Dimension
13-1/8 × 10 × 1-6/16 in.
Accession Number
2018.123.156
Provenance
William P. Kosmas, London, England (d. 2017); Estate of William P. Kosmas, Minneapolis; given to MIA, 2018.
Catalogue Raisonne
Field 215-248; ULAE 173
Curator Approved

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