Foirades/Fizzles

In one of the milestones of twentieth-century artists' books, Jasper Johns and Irish writer and poet Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) join forces in the enigmatic and elegant Foirades/Fizzles. Featuring five short prose texts, or fizzles, by Beckett along with 33 original intaglio prints by Johns, the collaboration seamlessly merges Beckett's austere writing style and concept of the fragmented individual with Johns's sensual rendering s of numerals, flagstones, crosshatchings, and parts of the human body. Originally written in French, the fizzles were translated into English by Beckett for this project. Johns's imagery is based both on his repertoire of iconic motifs and from his monumental work, Untitled (1972), a four-panel painting that features fragmentary patterns that the artist observed in the streets of New York City.