Artwork description & Analysis: Johns originally designed this big lithograph as a poster for the Whitney Museum's 1997 retrospective exhibition of his work. The motif of the Savarin coffee can appeared in several of Johns' earlier works, both as a life-size, painted bronze sculpture and as a found object added to a painting. The Savarin image became a signifier for Johns and his oeuvre, which made it an ideal subject for this print. The background of the lithograph portrays brightly colored crosshatched lines, a style which he quoted from one of his most recent paintings. By visually placing the Savarin can directly in front of one of his current paintings, Johns succinctly referenced his entire career through the dialogue between the two items within the print, apropos for the self-promotion related to a career retrospective. Johns later revisited this same lithograph in a series of single edition mono-prints, in which he painted over the original print, adding a renewed sense of the artist's presence and extending the reference to his oeuvre into the 1980s.
Lithograph - The Museum of Modern Art, New York