Michael Crichton’s 1977 Whitney Museum Catalogue
Everyone knows Michael Crichton as the author of page-turners like “The Andromeda Strain” and “Jurassic Park.” But the author, who died Tuesday at the age of 66, was also a collector of works by Jasper Johns, who chose Crichton to author the catalogue (revised and reissued in 1994) for his 1977 retrospective at the Whitney Museum.
Crichton then wrote:
With Johns, the issue of perception—of what you see, and why, and how you decide what your are looking at—are not merely questions to be decided in order to produce some final effect. They are instead the focus of the work itself….A painting by Johns, often by its very presence, suggests the question, what is painting?
Those of you who have access to the NY Times “Premium Archive” can find Grace Glueck‘s article about the Whitney retrospective and Crichton’s involvement in its catalogue here.