Why did Larry Gagosian want to stage a just-opened blockbuster exhibition of Jasper Johns‘s paintings at his Upper East Side gallery in New York? “First of all, because I want to look at them,” he told Alison McDonald in a soon-to-be-published Gagosian Quarterly interview. It’s not an especially lofty justification, but it’s at least an honest one—and it sets the tone for the entire conversation. In the piece, Gagosian talks fluently about the formal characteristics of Johns’s art—the way the 95-year-old artist works his surfaces, the way he wields his materials—but Gagosian generally doesn’t linger on the concepts behind the crosshatch paintings in this show. Instead, Gagosian is quickened, it seems, by what happens when you stand in front of these works for long enough. Related Articles The exhibition is undeniably strong. The crosshatch paintings, made between 1973 and 1983, are less austere than one might expect. Up close, they’re dense and worked, their encaustic interrupted by the occasional glimpse of newsprint or grit. From across the room, Johns’s marks loosen, and his grids soften. …