Gagosian director Michael Cary discusses "Jasper Johns: Between the Clock and the Bed.”

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]So, this is Jasper Johns Between the Clock and the Bed.

[00:00:03]An exhibition at 980 Madison Avenue in New York. It's a survey of the Johns body of work known as the crosshatch works. The crosshatch motif debuts at Leo Castelli's gallery on 77th Street in January of 1976.

[00:00:23]We opened our show in January of 2026, almost 50 years to the day. It was totally unforeseen [music] development in his work. Up until then, Johns had worked with images of what he said were things the mind already knows, flags, targets, numbers.

[00:00:41]>> [music] >> The crosshatches nobody expected. And it was quite a revelation. So, the crosshatch motif dominates [music] Johns' practice for about 10 years, but within that body of work, there's several different series.

[00:00:56]>> [music] >> Between the clock and the bed is a series that it's really a bit of a summation.

[00:01:01]Johns [music] painted six different versions of a composition based on Edvard Munch's 1943 self-portrait Between the Clock and the Bed. We titled the exhibition Between the Clock and the Bed because we were able to bring together all six painted [music] versions of that composition.