Jasper Johns’ Rockland County retreat inspires a new generation of artists

STONY POINT — A weathered rock wall running along West Main Street conceals a converted 1930s barn tucked into a thickly wooded hillside.

The rustic home’s former owner liked it that way.

Jasper Johns has long been known as private, if not reclusive. It’s not surprising the town’s historian barely knew the man widely considered one of America’s greatest living artists was living just a half-mile away in the 1970s and 80s.

Johns, who bought the home in 1973 for $48,000, proceeded to expand the space and install four floor-to-ceiling garage-door style rollup windows that allowed sunlight to pour into his second-floor studio and living room below.

“I do most of my work here,” he told The Journal News in 1976. “That’s why I had to add this space. Since I made the addition and have been here full time, I’m beginning to enjoy it.”

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Johns, whose paintings using abstract images of American flags and targets brought him to prominence in the 1950s, has produced some of this country’s most iconic artworks and influenced generations of artists.

His painting Three Flags, which he sold to a gallery in 1959 for $600, was resold by a private owner to the Whitney Museum of American Art for $1 million in 1980 — at the time the highest price ever paid to a living artist. Johns expressed amusement at the price tag in a 1980 Journal News interview. “But of course, it has nothing to do with painting,” he said.

His neighbors might not have been aware of his presence, but the home caught the attention of burglars who made off with some whiskey but ignored potentially priceless paintings and prints.

“They had otherwise excellent taste in liquor,” he said in the 1976 interview, provided by the Rockland Room at the New City Library. “They took only the best Scotches and left a lot of the other bottles.”

Johns, who moved back to Manhattan in 1987, sold the Stony Point home in 1995, according to county records. Now 92, he lives in Connecticut.

‘Think Grey Gardens’

Nowadays the 1.3-acre property’s rustic vibe inspires fashion photographers and filmmakers, as well as welcoming overnight guests to a converted studio apartment in the standalone wooden garage.

Stephanie Gutmann, who’s owned the property for nearly a decade, has been pitching it on home-sharing websites and Instagram as a location/vacation spot, albeit one that’s showing its age.

In one online listing she describes it as “a real old country house with all the quirks (and unique beauty) that implies,” and advises prospective visitors to “think ‘Grey Gardens’ not Better Homes and Gardens.”

The main features of the two-floor, two-bedroom 2,100-square-foot house are much the same as when Johns lived there. The exposed wooden beams, plank walls and tile and wood floors have been preserved. A wooden deck runs along the south-facing rear of the house.

Gone, however, is the backyard picnic table where Johns welcomed avant-garde composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham, who lived close by at the Gatehill Cooperative, also known as The Land.

Large windows in many rooms look out onto the bucolic parcel’s forested land, rock walls and the winding Cedar Pond Brook running along the periphery.

“He created light all over the place that he could paint by, and in doing so he created fantastic light for photography,” Gutmann said one recent morning. “People are very inspired by the light they get pretty much everywhere, particularly in the studio room because you have light streaming in from above and from virtually all sides.”

Bathroom art

Another clue to the home’s past that remains in place is an old-fashioned bathtub whose faucets are depicted in Johns’ artworks, including Racing Thoughts, which art critic Deborah Solomon placed among her favorites from his Stony Point period.

The 1983 painting, which is owned by the Whitney, is set in the small upstairs bathroom, whose wooden door is recognizable.

“Interestingly, Jasper set some of his most remarkable paintings in the smallest room in the Stony Point house — the bathroom,” Solomon, who is writing a biography about the artist, wrote in an email.

“In the painting, you cannot see the bathtub, only the faucets on the tub,” Solomon said. “If there is a bather, he or she is hidden. But we do see, in vibrant colors, a wall collaged with emblems of the artist's past, including a print by Barnett Newman, a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, and a black-and-white puzzle picturing the art dealer Leo Castelli.”

‘Very redeeming for me’

Stephanie Gutmann and her husband, William Tucker, bought the home in 2013 for $380,000, according to records. Tucker became “obsessed with owning it” and outbid another buyer, she said.

The husband-and-wife journalists had lived there only a few weeks when Tucker was diagnosed with cancer. “We still managed to have two great parties here,” she said, before Tucker died in 2016.

Needing to find a way to pay mounting expenses, Gutmann, a self-described semi-trained photographer, realized Johns’ studio would make an ideal location for photographers, videographers and filmmakers. Magazines have done fashion shoots here, and the musician Surf Mesa filmed a music video on the property.

The emotional and financial challenges of living in the home have been difficult, said Gutmann, who stays busy with upkeep the old house demands.

“A period that could've been very, very hard, and was hard, was really redeemed by having this house to work on, because I like to do carpentry and stuff like that,” Gutmann said, standing outside by a ladder she’d been using while painting one of the barn board walls.

“And then also very redeeming for me was this little piece of land with the stream and the different levels and the old trees,” she added.

Deer, hawks, egrets, wild turkeys and the occasional fox and coyote wander freely through the bushes and towering trees. “It’s almost like a little animal sanctuary, so you’ll get deer wandering right up to the windows and peering in,” she said.

Robert Brum is a freelance journalist who writes about the Hudson Valley. Contact him at metro@lohud.com. Read his work at robertbrum.com.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Jasper John's Rockland County retreat now vacation, filming spot