A review by risky_oak
Jasper Johns by Michael Crichton

Διαβάστε και την κριτική μου στα Ελληνικά στις βιβλιοαλχημείες.

This book has a story.
It was my first order from a non-Cyprus based company, early in May after the lock-down.

It got lost in the mail and by early August I stopped hoping of it ever arriving.

But early this month I got a notice from the post office about a package. I knew I hadn't bought anything for at least 2 months so I felt it was this book.



And it was!
My last nonfiction by Crichton, an out of print, and pretty rare edition. The spine was damaged but I fixed it and managed to read the book comfortably (as comfortable as an 11-inches-tall hardcover coffee-table book can be).

This was my last first-read of a Crichton book for 2020.
The rest will be rereads until August when I'll be reading his last posthumous novel for the first time «[b:Dragon Teeth|31287693|Dragon Teeth|Michael Crichton|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1481163021l/31287693._SY75_.jpg|51948646]», thus concluding my Crichton Project.

If you are not a Crichton fan, or a fan of art books, or to be more precise a fan of abstract -expressionism / pop art and the like, this is not an ideal book for you.

Out of the 248 pages only 100 are the actual text by Crichton. The rest 100-something are most of Jasper Johns's works many covering one or two pages, a vast majority of them in full colour.

Crichton divided this biography in three chapters:
1) Impressions of the Artist where we discover who exactly is Jasper Johns,
2) A Brief History of the Work, where we learn about Johns's development as a painter and sculptor, and
3) The function of the observer which is more philosophical than the previous two, a chapter where Crichton explores themes like: artist's conception vs viewer's perception, perceived reality vs painted re-creation, reality vs imagination, observation, visual paradoxes, and many more.

Crichton owned himself a few of Johns' works and in this book his ability as a writer combined with his ability as an art observer gave us something more than a simple artist's-biography.

It explored themes that we might have thought about but never articulated:
Is abstract art abstract, if its intentioned and has a pattern?

I'm glad I finally received this book so I won't have to buy it again.
My last rare Crichton book is finally part of my collection (excluding his two published screenplays I have yet to buy:[b:Westworld|22080|Westworld|Michael Crichton|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1298961031l/22080._SY75_.jpg|23148], [b:Twister|16759|Twister|Michael Crichton|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1225534720l/16759._SY75_.jpg|941837]).