Perilous Night – (Jasper Johns) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Jasper Johns

Date: 1982

Size: 171 x 244 cm

Technique: Silkscreen

Three casts of human hands and forearms hang from the top edge of the right half of this horizontal abstract painting, which is divided vertically in two equal parts. The rectangular field to the left is mottled with steel and charcoal gray streaked with white and amethyst purple. The panel to the right is divided again so the top half is slightly larger than the bottom half. The bottom portion is painted with a pattern to resemble abstracted wood grain in nickel and slate gray. A stylized white cloth, perhaps a handkerchief, is painted to look as if hanging from a nail hammered into the wood paneling, to our left. The top portion seems to be layered with paintings and prints below and beneath the three arms. The three-dimensional arms hang from looped metal wires on metal hooks spaced along the top edge, coming about a quarter of the way down the overall composition. The peach-colored arms and hands are painted all over with irregular gray patches, creating a camouflage effect. They hang down so the open palms are flat against the canvas, the thumbs extended to our left. The top of the arm to our left is painted cherry red, the middle is painted canary yellow, and the right arm royal blue. The paint drips down the arms and splatters on the hands and on the faux wood panel below. Behind the hands, it appears that one of the artist’s prints hangs from two nails on the canvas, but this is also part of the painting. The illusionistic print has three horizontal bands of pine green, pumpkin orange, and violet purple crisscrossed with black lines. Seeming to hang behind it and under the right-most arm is a sheet of music overlapping another piece of paper printed with the letters “OHN C” and “THE PERILOUS.” Below, and filling the space between the illusionistic print and the wood panel, is a rectangular field of abstract gray and black swirling forms. The entire canvas is surrounded by a thin, amber-colored wood frame. A narrow wooden slat is attached with a hinge on the inner surface of the frame at the bottom right corner, so the slat runs up along and rests against the canvas near the rightmost edge of the frame. The artist signed the work with stenciled letters in pale gray in the lower right corner: “J. JOHNS ‘8.”