Jasper Johns Calendar

While looking at Jasper Johns’s artworks about his grandparents yesterday, an earlier reference unexpectedly fell into place. There’s a group of works titled Montez Singing from 1988-90 whose title and motifs refer to the artist’s childhood memory of the grandmother who took him in as a small child [after his own parents both basically flaked on raising him]. There are two paintings titled Montez Singing, and before one showed up at the Whitney, I’d weirdly already seen it twice in the collections of two of its previous owners, where I never heard or asked a word about it. Jasper Johns, A Calendar for 1991, published by the Anthony d’Offay gallery, via ebay There is also at least one work on paper—which was included in the Jasper Johns Calendar for 1991, published in a limited edition by Anthony d’Offay. The Montez work and the calendar, which was distributed as a holiday gift to d’Offay’s clients, are, amazingly, the subject of an interview Johns made with artist and poet Marjorie…