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Numbers in Color Numbers in Color
Southgate, M. Therese
2005-02-16 00:00:00
They are ubiquitous, like the air. They are all around us, yet we are seldom aware of them. We use them constantly: to count our change, to count our minutes, to fly our rockets. Bach needed them for his inventions, Shakespeare for his sonnets, Michelangelo for his David. Governments need them to count their citizens, families to count their offspring, corporations to set their profit margins. They are the skeleton of life, the stuff of art, of science, of commerce, and of daily intercourse: we call them numbers. They are as necessary as breathing. “Take away number in all things,” said the sixth-century Spanish scholar Isidore of Seville, “and all things perish. Take calculation from the world and all is enveloped in dark ignorance, nor can he who does not know the way to reckon be distinguished from the rest of the animals.” (Quoted in: Crosby AW. The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press; 1988.) To the 20th-century American painter Jasper Johns (1930- ), it was these very qualities—the fact that they permeate every phase of life and yet for the most part escape awareness as breathing usually escapes awareness—that made numbers the ideal motif for his paintings. Like his other repeated motifs—the American flag (JAMA cover, June 23/30, 2004), bull’s-eye targets, the alphabet, and words—the Arabic numeral was a “ready-made, found symbol,” analogous to the “ready-made, found objects” of Marcel Duchamp. In the mid-1950s, Johns began a series of number paintings that he has grouped into four categories: “Figures” (a pun, perhaps, on the reputed scarcity of figure painters at that time); “Numbers”; “0-9/Ten Numbers”; and “0 through 9.” Each category was unique. In the Figures group each number was painted individually, but they did not follow in sequence on the canvas; in the Numbers group, each digit was also painted individually, but on the canvas they adhered to a strict and overlapping sequential pattern. The 0-9/Ten Numbers group again considered each of the ten digits individually; again they appeared in sequence, but always in a single, complete set of ten, never more, never less. Finally, in the 0 through 9 group (which again suggests a pun) each numeral is painted individually, but on top of the one previously painted: if one looks for the zero, for example, it can be viewed only by looking through all the others in the same space. (A comprehensive discussion of these categories, as well as their accompanying plates, will be found in the essay by Professor Roberta Bernstein in the exhibition catalog [Bernstein R, Foster CE. Jasper Johns Numbers. Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Museum of Art; 2003].) Numbers in Color (cover ) belongs to the second category, where all ten digits appear, in sequence, and are repeated against the framework of a grid or matrix. As Bernstein notes, each individual number is a “figure” painting, but by being arranged in rows and columns, hierarchy is eliminated, there is no focal point, and no single number has “pride of place.” There is no center, so to speak. (It could be noted, on the other hand, that if any single number does attract the eye over its fellows, it is the Figure 8 in row 5, column 6—more easily identified to a generation of spreadsheet users, perhaps, as cell F5; not only is it classically placed just above the geometric center of the work, cell F6, but its shining white aura draws the eye almost immediately to the single digit among an array of more than a hundred others; moreover, it will be recalled, when the Figure 8 is turned on its side, it becomes the mathematical sign for infinity.) Jasper Johns (1930- ), Numbers in Color, 1958-1959, American. Encaustic and newspaper on canvas. 168.9 × 125.7 cm. Courtesy of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (http://ah.bfn.org/a/elmwd/1285/alb.html), Buffalo, NY; gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr. © Jasper Johns/licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. A very rigid order is observed: Beginning in the first row, the 10 digits are sequenced over 11 columns, the first column being left numberless. Still in sequence, the second row begins with zero and continues over the next 10 columns to end the row in zero. Again without breaking the sequence, row three begins with numeral one and ends with numeral one. And so on for a total of 11 rows and 11 columns (which are read in a similar fashion) for a total of 121 frames, all but the upper left containing a digit and each digit appearing 12 times. Proportionally, each of the frames of the individual digits is slightly taller than wide; the final grid preserves the exact proportions of the individual frames. Abstract as the concepts of numbers are, Johns' paintings make them a concrete reality, as real as the coins in one's pockets, yet still allows them their potential as concepts. They reinforce the universal human fascination with numbers that begins in earliest childhood and lasts until the very limits of life. There is nothing surprising here. Numbers are, after all, the engine of progress, stuff of science and of art: they are the very heart and soul of medicine.
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JAMA
American Medical Association
http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/american-medical-association/numbers-in-color-gYCrnqhgfM
