Between The Clock And The Bed 0 (1989)

Between The Clock And The Bed 0: Jasper Johns’ Late-Career Meditation on Time and Identity

Few artists have interrogated the boundaries between object and representation as relentlessly as Jasper Johns. Between The Clock And The Bed 0 (1989) emerges from a period when Johns, then in his late 50s, was distilling decades of exploration into works of quiet intensity. This painting belongs to a series inspired by Edvard Munch’s The Girls on the Bridge (1902) and the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s final words—“Between the clock and the bed”—a phrase that haunted Johns for its poetic ambiguity. Unlike the frenetic energy of his early flag and target paintings, this composition exudes a measured stillness, as though each brushstroke were a tick of the clock itself.

The work’s title and structure invite a reading of temporal suspension. Johns replaces Munch’s figures with his signature crosshatch motif, a pattern he first developed in the 1970s as a way to “erase” imagery while leaving its ghostly trace. Here, the crosshatches float over a field of muted ochres and grays, interrupted by the stark geometry of a clock face and the rectangular void of a bed. The absence of human presence is deliberate; as Johns once remarked in an interview with the Museum of Modern Art, his late works often “deal with the residue of experience rather than the experience itself.” The clock, rendered in skeletal lines, becomes a metaphor for the artist’s own mortality—a theme that grew more pronounced in his post-1980 output.

Jasper Johns in the 1980s: From Pop Icon to Philosophical Painter

By the late 1980s, Jasper Johns had long shed the label of “Pop artist,” though his influence on the movement remained undeniable. The 1980s marked a turn toward introspection, as Johns grappled with the legacy of his own iconography. His earlier works—flags, targets, maps—had deconstructed symbols of collective identity. Now, he turned to the personal: the studio as a stage, the self as a subject dissolved into marks and motifs. Between The Clock And The Bed 0 belongs to this phase, where Johns’ compositions became sparser, his palette more subdued, and his references more literary.

The crosshatch pattern, which dominates this painting, first appeared in Johns’ 1972 Untitled series. Originally derived from a car’s rear-view mirror warning (“Objects in mirror are closer than they appear”), the motif evolved into a visual shorthand for perception’s unreliability. In the 1980s, Johns deployed it as a scaffold, layering it over images of his own earlier works or, as here, over voids that suggest absence. The Art Story notes that this period saw Johns “treating the canvas as a palimpsest,” where each new layer both conceals and reveals what lies beneath. The clock and bed in this work thus function not as objects but as coordinates—points between which meaning oscillates.

Johns’ late works reject the spectacle of his 1950s breakthroughs. Here, the crosshatch isn’t a pattern but a pause—a visual breath held between the inevitability of time and the stasis of memory.

The Making of Between The Clock And The Bed 0: Process as Poetics

Composition: The Grid as a Cage

The painting’s structure is deceptively simple. A horizontal band divides the canvas, with the clock occupying the upper register and the bed’s rectangular form anchoring the lower. Johns’ use of the crosshatch—meticulously rendered in oil—creates a grid that flattens depth, trapping the viewer’s gaze in a web of repetitive lines. Unlike his earlier works, where the crosshatch served as a background, here it dominates, reducing the clock and bed to mere interruptions. The effect is claustrophobic, as though the entire scene were viewed through a screen.

Surface and Subversion

Johns’ technique in this period involved building up layers of paint and wax, then scraping or incising the surface to reveal what lay beneath. In Between The Clock And The Bed 0, the crosshatches appear almost embossed, their ridges catching the light differently depending on the angle. The clock face, by contrast, is rendered in thin, almost tentative lines, as if drawn with a dry brush. This contrast between the tactile crosshatch and the ephemeral clock underscores the painting’s central tension: the physicality of the mark versus the intangibility of time.

Displaying Between The Clock And The Bed 0: A Study in Contrast

This print’s muted palette and geometric rigor make it a versatile anchor for modern interiors. The 30×40 cm (12×16”) size suits a study, library, or minimalist bedroom, where its meditative quality can be fully appreciated. Pair it with warm wood tones—walnut or teak—to offset the cool grays, or let it stand alone against a matte black or deep navy wall for dramatic contrast. In a gallery-style arrangement, flank it with smaller abstract works, but avoid competing patterns; the crosshatch demands space to breathe. For maximal impact, position it at eye level in a narrow hallway, where the linear motifs will draw the viewer’s gaze along the corridor.

More Works by Jasper Johns

Explore the evolution of Johns’ iconic motifs, from his early flags to the introspective crosshatches of his later career.

Jasper Johns

Flag On Orange Field (1957)

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Jasper Johns

White Target (1969)

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Jasper Johns

Untitled Ulae S13

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Jasper Johns

Scott Fagan Record (1970)

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