‘”A heuristic event”: reconsidering the problem of the Johnsian conversation

Abstract

The contemporary American artist Jasper Johns is notorious for being difficult to interview. Frustrated by his resistance to the kind of interpretive strategies his artwork seems to invite, critics and art historians have fueled the myth of the Johnsian conversation. This essay is based on a careful reconsideration of the many interviews that Johns has given in the course of his career and asks: what is to be learned from Johns’ interviews? It offers analysis of several interviews as sites of ‘a heuristic event’. A phrase borrowed from Leo Steinberg’s groundbreaking essay on Johns, ‘a heuristic event’ offers the reader an opportunity to reevaluate her interpretation of the interview, to learn from it something about how meaning is generated and operates in Johns’ work.

Keywords

• Jasper Johns
• artist interview
• heuristic event
• Leo Steinberg
• interpretation