Even Littler Johns

Jasper Johns, Small Numbers in Color, 1959, 10 1/8 x 7 1/8 in., encaustic & collage on wood printing block, photographed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2021 for Mind/Mirror, collection:the artist, but it’s there in 2026, too. The incredible Small Numbers in Color, 1959, that Jasper Johns loaned to the Philadelphia Museum for the 2021 retrospective is [again?/still?] on view there. We saw it last weekend after the Duchamp show, and it was [again?/still?] fantastic. I have done nothing to find out what the back of the wood printing block is like. But let’s focus instead on how wonderfully it’s framed, in its shadow box. Suddenly I’m thinking of whole shelves full of hair coloring kits locked in their anti-shoplifting case at Target. Jasper Johns, Numbers, 1957, oil on cardboard, 8 1/4 x 6 in., as published in JJCR, P33 And then this week to find that Christie’s is selling an even earlier, even smaller Numbers from Antonio Homem’s Sonnabend collection. The catalogue raisonné notes…