009 - jasper johns

Let’s go surfing! The incoming text stared at me from my phone as I drove south on the PCH after a surf in Malibu. It was from a guy named Seng. I recently met him thanks to Merry, a French Uma Thurman look-alike I met through friends and found to be interesting.

A week prior, Merry told me she was sick, so I offered to bring her soup because she didn’t have food and DVDs because she didn’t have internet. She accepted my offer and requested a heated water bottle be added to my list. Forty dollars later, I was greeted by an energetic Merry at the front door and invited inside her apartment. Nothing made sense. Merry had on fresh makeup, didn’t seem sick and wanted to hang out. If she was sick, I did not. I envisioned a drop at the front door, a smile and hello from the driveway and a wave goodbye from my car as I drove away.

Fifteen minutes later, Merry was smoking a cigarette in the kitchen while I sat in the living room, trying to update the software on her computer, so she could watch the DVDs, when the doorbell rang. Merry put out her cigarette and rushed to the front door, yanked it open and in walked Seng, a clean cut Asian male about the same age and height as me (shorter than Merry). They immediately started bickering in French. Was he her boyfriend? I didn’t know. Things calmed as Merry took a seat on the carpet and pointed to areas of her neck that gave her pain. Seng started to give Merry a massage and my confusion grew. So much for the heated water bottle. Did I keep the receipt? It didn’t matter.

Soon they started speaking English with me and I learned what was going on. Seng and Merry were friends who met in English as a Second Language class. Merry texted Seng to hurry over because she didn’t know why I was being so nice to her. She continued to complain about her ailments in French while I got to know Seng in English. He bullet-pointed his life story for me — Born in Cambodia but raised in France, moved to LA to be reunited with his Mom and brother who he hadn’t seen in 15 years, now working as a masseuse while studying English — and in turn he had plenty of questions for me about “American’s culture.”

That night we met, Seng told me he always wanted to try surfing, so I was ready for his text. This was our moment. I knew from experience, when I first moved to LA, I’d meet people, talk, laugh, connect, think I made a new friend, but then I’d never see or hear from them again. I didn’t want this to be the case for me and Seng, so I replied, “Sounds good. When and where?” He texted back: “El Porto. I be there in 45 minutes.” I kept driving south.

Since then, Seng has become one of my best friends and in our time together, he’s delivered several memorable lines about the cultural differences between Americans, Europeans, and Asians. “In Cambodia, we don’t have dog food. We have human food and then whatever food we give to the dogs,” is one of my favorites or “What is it with Americans and their flag? I’m always seeing the flag. I know where I am. Why do I need to see it everywhere I go?” This one opened my eyes.

I introduce to you: Jasper Johns

In 1954, at 24 years old, two years after being discharged from the US Army, at the height of the Cold War, after having a dream, Jasper Johns painted his first American flag. He assembled three canvases on a piece of plywood and painted over an intentionally nondescript collage of torn newspaper. Johns needed a controllable, quick-drying method, so opted for an ancient Egyptian technique called encaustic painting where color pigment is added to heated wax, leaving a sculpted, textured, translucent result.

Is it a painting or a flag? It’s both and a number of other things, depending on the viewer. It’s a universally recognizable image. When on display inside a museum, it hangs off over there on a wall. It will catch your fleeting eyes and pull you closer until you’re standing in front of it, looking at it, peering into it, contemplating the meaning or feeling gained by your engagement with it.

I think about our massive country. The military, all the brave serving abroad, so I can be safe at home. I think about the 4th of July, growing up in Wisconsin. Blue lakes and green trees. Mosquitos. The smell of food being cooked on the grill. “The only vegetable Americans have at a barbecue is ketchup.” Another cultural observation of Seng’s. “Tomatoes are fruit,” I bat away his Frenchness.

And I think about the young artist, Jasper Johns and how he turned the everyday image of a flag into a painting. Movement and potency all over, standing in front of the flag, my eyes can’t stop. They sift every inch. Johns executed a wild dance inside the dimensional limits of a predesigned guide: 48 stars and 13 stripes. He displayed complete control of seemingly untamed strokes. He took an everyday object and made it art.

And I think about Seng, his family, their story, and the stories of every other immigrant now living in America. “It was my Mom’s dream for her sons to make it in America. She went through a lot of trouble and gave up a lot for us to be here.” I think about what the flag means to them.

For Seng, he still has questions about American culture and his own life. “I’m French, living with my Cambodian family in America. Sometimes I feel like an adopted child in my own family. For breakfast, they sit at the table with rice and tea. And me? I have bread and coffee.” Now, he has an American girlfriend much smarter than me to help.

Johns said his flag paintings were created to open our eyes because the American flag is something we look at, but do not see. The same could be true for people. We look at each other, but do not see each other. Art reminds us that our only shared experience is the opportunity to see. People like Seng and Merry remind me to walk with my eyes open. — Phillip Dillon

Here are a few quotes of jasper’s that made me think or smile:

“All familiar things can open into strange worlds.”

“Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.”

“To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.”

“I assumed that everything would lead to complete failure, but I decided that didn't matter – that would be my life.”

“I often find that having an idea in my head prevents me from doing something else. Working is therefore a way of getting rid of an idea.”

“I think that one wants from a painting a sense of life. The final suggestion, the final statement, has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless statement. It has to be what you can't avoid saying.”