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Time and again, after the late '80s, one comes up against Johnses that seem to have no raison d'etre, and are valued merely because Johns did them. What is the point of those tracings done from a reproduction of Cezanne's Bathers? As homages they're trivial; as formal studies they're as uninteresting as his tracings done from a motif of his old idol Marcel Duchamp. Perhaps it is true that, as his admirers believe, a sublimely arcane and complex intentionality lies behind the fragmented and mingily internalized imagery of late Johns, tying all its scattered hints together. But one does not have to be altogether a philistine to doubt it.