Perilous Night

This is a large drawing, about a metre high and a little more across, made with black ink on frosted mylar, a translucent plastic sheet. The colors are somber, with black, yellow, purple and blue. The sheet seems to divide into two halves. On the right-hand side you will find a page of music and its cover sheet, drawn in fluid, flowing ink. On the left is a freehand drawing of a single soldier, shown in an abstracted way and turned sideways. Between the two sits a dark imprint of an arm.

Start on the left side of the sheet. The soldier is not upright. He has been reversed, as in a mirror, and turned ninety degrees, so you may need to tilt your head to read him. He is meant to look terror-stricken. Then move toward the middle, between the soldier and the music. There you will see a black imprint of the artist's right arm. Finally, look to the right, where the musical score and its cover sheet are drawn with loose, flowing ink rather than stiff, mechanical lines.

Jasper Johns began his career in the mid-1950s by re-creating familiar images with great precision, such as targets, letters, numbers and flags. Later his subjects became less commonplace, but he kept borrowing from the public domain, meaning images and things that belong to everyone. The title comes from a piece of music written in 1945 by the American composer John Cage. The soldier comes from the Resurrection panel of Matthias Grünewald's sixteenth-century Isenheim Altarpiece. Johns often explored one subject in different media, and this drawing derives from a painting of the same name made in 1982.

The two borrowed images share an idea. The soldier is overcome as he witnesses the Resurrection of Christ. The music marks a key transition in a composer's career. Both point to perilous nights that can change the course of a human life. The black imprint of Johns's right arm may be a sign of the creative power that can join two very different images into one clear statement. Look a little longer at that dark arm between the soldier and the score, the point where the two halves meet.