Perilous Night by Jasper Johns

Perilous Night detail by Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns, Perilous Night (detail of arms), 1982, encaustic on canvas with objects, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection 1995.79.1

Plaster casts of three dismembered arms hang from hooks against the surface of the painting. The spots on the arms might allude to illness and death: they recall Grünewald's manner of depicting Christ's wounds in the Isenheim Altarpiece. Some critics have interpreted the spots as sores produced by AIDS. Johns said he found this connection logical, though it was not intentional.

The spots also visually recall the patterns Johns used in his abstract works of the 1970s.

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