Jasper Johns and Target

Adam Benforado (identified as "a lawyer and art history buff") writes a really insightful and sensitive piece for the WaPo on corporate sponsorship of art, an issue which has been largely ignored by most art critics, writers and other artworld symbiots.

Currently hanging outside the East Wing of the National Gallery is a large banner of Jasper Johns's 1955 "Target With Four Faces," advertising a show celebrating the first decade of his work. The painting is dominated by the title motif: a blue dot surrounded by four concentric circles of alternating yellow and blue. Walking in recently, I joked to my companion that I was surprised that Target wasn't sponsoring the show.

Out of the mouths of babes . . .

It turns out Target is sponsoring it, "proudly," in fact.

Offering financial backing to the exhibition was undoubtedly a savvy move for Target. After all, the show is filled with paintings that, though they aren't red and white, evoke Target's corporate logo. Johns's targets also appear on the exhibition catalogue and posters for sale in the gift shop. On the busy Sunday I was there, hundreds of people were strolling through, staring intently at various depictions of an image that has been engrained in our heads as standing for one of America's most powerful and successful companies.

And then Adam Benforado offers up a solution:

First, if we care about art -- if we value it as a social good -- we must increase public funding so that museum directors and artists can remain independent. While the United States is unlikely to shift to the centralized European model of art sponsorship, the federal government's stingy arts budget could be increased without any of us feeling much of a bite in our pocketbooks.

Second, we should demand that corporations give money to art galleries without sponsoring particular shows. If Target is really committed to "arts and education," as it says in the Johns show brochure, then it should be just as satisfied with its donation going to support the excellent exhibit on Rembrandt's prints and drawings in the adjoining building.

Or the operating budget for the WPA/C, or finding a place for the Wyeth mural, etc. My kudos to Adam. Read the whole article here.