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Home , Flag (painting), Leo Castelli, Map (painting), Mom and Pop Art, Three Flags, Timeline of art

20TH CENTURY ART

Title: Hear the Art : Click to Listen mp3 Year: 1958

In the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art

Read Text of the Audio Listen to an audio introduction and a verbal description

For Educators

Text of the Audio

• Jasper Johns is one of most important and influential American painters of the twentieth century. To understand why, let’s look at one of his most famous titled Three Flags. He painted it in 1958.

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Three Flags is basically a of three American flags, displayed flat and unfolded, lying one on top of another. There’s a small one closest to you that you see completely, a slightly larger one behind that, and the largest is behind both of them. For the last two, you can only see parts of the flags, around their edges. The flags are in the traditional colors, thirteen horizontal stripes alternating red and white, and a rectangle of blue in the upper left corner holding six rows of white stars for a total of 48. Remember, Johns painted this in 1958, before Alaska and Hawaii became states.

So Three Flags seems at first glance to be a patriotic painting celebrating the nation’s symbol. And maybe it is. Some critics suggest that Jasper Johns painted American flags because he was named after a military hero in the Revolutionary War, Sergeant William Jasper. Maybe.

And maybe the painting Three Flags is about something else.

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Three Flags is an example of how Johns often used images and techniques from popular mass culture, things like advertising, comic books, and as Johns once said, “things the mind already knows.” Like the American flag. His seemed partly a reaction to , an of the time whose paintings had no recognizable content all.

Everyone could recognize the American flags. But their meaning could be just as elusive as an Abstract Expressionist painting. For instance, everyone who looks at a painting of the American flag will find their own meaning, depending on things like your age, your , your nationality, the times in which you live. But maybe Johns didn’t care what meaning you give to the flags. Maybe he wanted you to look at the painting as a painting. To make that point clearer, here’s a bit more verbal description of the painting Three Flags.

Johns did not work with . Instead he used encaustic, also called hot wax painting, a technique in which an artist mixes beeswax with color pigments. The result is a thick surface on the canvas that you can easily see. And Johns laid it on so thick that the painting is 5 inches deep. The smallest painting, closest to you, is sticking out 5 inches above the largest painting beneath it. It almost seems like a , or maybe a tapestry, hanging on the wall. Maybe Johns is asking you to consider the question, what is a painting? His answer: it’s a visual object, something in itself. Just look at it. Jasper Johns and his paintings

Jasper Johns was born in Augusta, Georgia, in 1930, and grew up in small towns in South Carolina. Having shown a childhood affinity for , he nurtured interest in art and poetry during his early education, at the University of South California. After a brief period at in New York, he served in the army in 1951-53, in South Carolina, and then in Japan. On his release from the army he moved back to New York. There his contacts with , especially , prompted him to a higher level of commitment to his art - a commitment that entailed his destruction of virtually all his previous works.

Johns' first mature painting, Flag (1954-55; The , New York), was painstakingly fabricated, predominantly with newspaper collage and encaustic. Immediately following came a series of encaustic paintings of numbers and targets (two of the latter including, in rows of boxes above the bull's eye, plaster casts of body parts and face fragments respectively). These works were all but unknown until Johns' first solo exhibition, at the Gallery, in January 1958. With that show and its attendant critical attention, Johns was immediately pegged as one of the most important figures in a new wave of American art that was to eclipse the dominance of Abstract Expressionist painting.

Fortified by his close friendships with Rauschenberg and with musician and the dancer/choreographer , and strongly drawn to the subversive legacy of , Johns became universally recognized as a key progenitor of both the Pop and the Minimal art of the 1960s. His of bold flat imagery such as the American flag, and his strategies of working by systematic repetition, catalyzed whole schools of new painting, sculpture, and . However, as was already clear in his first retrospective exhibition, at The Jewish Museum, New York, 19 1964, his own work resisted any clear stylistic label or group affiliation, as it blended attached objects, inscribed words and a complex richness of surface elaboration, within an alternation between concrete literalness and painterly abstraction. A mood of private, enigmatic thoughtfulness, often ironic, melancholic, or gravely repressed in its overtones, linked together his concern with language, the sinuosity of his work's surfaces, and his recurrent imagery of the body in parts. In the early 1960s he also produced a small but influential body of actual-size of commonplace objects such as beer cans, light bulbs, and flashlights, and by the end of that decade he had gained a reputation as a master printmaker.

For ten years beginning in 1972, Johns' paintings were virtually exclusively abstract, conceived in allover "cross-hatch" patterns of clusters of parallel lines. Toward the end of that decade, following a major retrospective at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art in 1977, his art began to evoke, in titles and in motifs, and eclectic new set of references to other art, including that of the Norwegian painter , as well as Tantric Buddhist devotional imagery. In 1982 the look of Johns' paintings once again changed dramatically, as he began a series of representational works that assembled traced and copied imagery both from his own past art and from diverse sources in , ranging from 's graphic work and to Matthias Grunewald's Isenheim Altarpiece. The mid-1980s saw the emergence of overtly autobiographical paintings, their centerpiece being a group of four Seasons canvases allegorizing a cycle of youth and old age with symbols related to the epochs of the artist's work and to his various residences. Near the same time, he developed a new motif, a rectangular "face" with widely dislocated features, that related to Picasso paintings.

Since the late 1980s Johns' art appears to have centered on issues of childhood and memory, often employing a base of motifs recovered from earlier works, layered over with a new skein of imagery ranging from a floor plan of his grandfather's house to a ghostly spiraling galaxy.

Since the 1980s, Johns produces paintings at four to five a year, sometimes not at all during a year. His large scale paintings are much favored by collectors and due to their rarity, it is known that Johns' works are extremely difficult to acquire.

Skate’s Research (Skate Press, Ltd.), a New York based advisory firm servicing private and institutional investors in the art market, has ranked Jasper Johns as the 30th most valuable artist.

Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.” -Jasper Johns

http://www.jasper-johns.org

ART MASTERPIECE- THREE FLAGS by Jasper Johns

Three Flags by Jasper Johns done around 1954/55 is a painting where the artist painted 3 separate flags and attached them to each other, creating a 3 dimensional object.

Born in 1930 in Augusta, Georgia and raised in South Carolina, Jasper Johns is an American painter, sculptor, and print maker who has played a leading role in the development of mid-20th century American Art. He is an artist known for his fascination with commonplace and familiar symbols. In 1954 he began painting works in a manner radically different from the abstract expressionist style that then dominated American art. His canvases were devoted to familiar objects as targets (bulls eyes), flags, numbers, and alphabet letters.

[Abstract expressionism is non-realistic art without recognizable images and does not adhere to the limits of conventional form. The styles were diverse, and usually either emphasized action or color.]

Jasper Johns painted these familiar subjects with objectivity and precision, applying paint very thickly (called the impasto technique) so that the paintings became objects in themselves rather than reproductions of recognizable items. This idea of art-as-object became a potent influence on later sculpture as well as paintings. He often integrated 3- dimensional objects into his paintings, attaching real objects, such as rulers and compasses to the canvas.

Pop artists drew their imagery from advertising billboards, movies, comic strips, and ordinary every day objects.

The pop art movement began as a reaction against the abstract expressionist style of the 1940s to 1950s which the pop artists considered overly intellectual, subjective, and totally removed from reality. Pop artists chose to close the gap between life and art by embracing the environment of every day life. They sought to provide a perception of reality even more immediate than that offered by the realistic painting of the past. They also worked to be impersonal - that is to allow the viewer to respond directly to the object, rather than to the skill and personality of the artist. Occasionally however, an element of social criticism can be discerned in pop art.

Jasper Johns said, "I make what it pleases me to make ... I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don't think that's a painter's business." He just paints paintings without a conscious reason. "I intuitively like to paint flags." However, as Jasper Johns grew older, he made his paintings more personal and autobiographical. Jasper Johns - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 1 of 5

Jasper Johns From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jasper Johns, Jr. (born May 15, 1930) is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and . Jasper Johns

Contents

■ 1Life ■ 2 Work ■ 2.1 Painting ■ 2.2 Sculpture ■ 2.3 Prints Three Flags, 1958, Whitney Museum of American ■ 2.4 Commissions Art ■ 3 Collections ■ 4 Recognition Born May 15, 1930 ■ 5Art market Augusta, Georgia, U.S. ■ 6Other work Nationality American ■ 7 In popular culture Field Painting, Printmaking ■ 8 References Movement Abstract Expressionism, Neo-, ■ 9 External links Pop Art Works Flags, Numbers, Maps, Stenciled Words Life Influenced Pop Art Awards (1988) Awarded the Grand Prize for Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his Painting at the Venice Biennial Artist paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed. He then spent a year living with his of the year mother in Columbia, South Carolina and thereafter he spent several years living with his aunt (1989) Awards By MIR Gladys in Lake Murray, South Carolina, twenty-two miles from Columbia. He completed high (1990) National Medal of Arts school in Sumter, South Carolina, where he once again lived with his mother.[1] Recounting this (2011) Presidential Medal of Freedom period in his life, he says, "In the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn't know what that meant. I think I thought it meant that I would be in a situation different than the one that I was in." He began drawing when he was three and has continued doing art ever since.[2]

Johns studied at the University of South Carolina from 1947 to 1948, a total of three semesters.[3] He then moved to and studied briefly at the Parsons School of Design in 1949.[3] In 1952 and 1953 he was stationed in Sendai, Japan during the Korean War.[3]

In 1954, after returning to New York, Johns met Robert Rauschenberg and they became long term lovers.[4][5][6] In the same period he was strongly influenced by the gay couple Merce Cunningham (a choreographer) and John Cage (a composer).[7][8] Working together they explored the contemporary Flag, Encaustic, oil and collage on fabric art scene, and began developing their ideas on art. In 1958, gallery owner Leo Castelli discovered mounted on plywood,1954-55 Johns while visiting Rauschenberg's studio.[3] Castelli gave him his first solo show. It was here that Alfred Barr, the founding director of New York's Museum of Modern Art, purchased four works from his exhibition.[2] In 1963, Johns and Cage founded Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, now known as Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York City.

Johns currently lives in Sharon, Connecticut and the Island of Saint Martin.[9] Until 2012, he lived in a rustic 1930s farmhouse with a glass-walled studio in Stony Point, New York for close to three decades. He first began visiting St. Martin in the late 1960s and bought the property here in 1972. The architect is the principal designer of his home, a long, white, rectangular structure divided into three distinct sections.[10]

Work Detail of Flag (1954-55). Museum of Modern Art, New York City. This image Painting illustrates Johns' early technique of painting with thick, dripping encaustic over a collage Johns is best known for his painting Flag (1954–55), which he painted after having a dream of the made from found materials such as American flag. His work is often described as a Neo-Dadaist, as opposed to pop art, even though his [citation needed] newspaper. This rough method of subject matter often includes images and objects from popular culture. Still, many construction is rarely visible in photographic compilations on pop art include Jasper Johns as a pop artist because of his artistic use of classical reproductions of his work. iconography.

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Early works were composed using simple schema such as flags, maps, targets, letters and numbers. Johns' treatment of the surface is often lush and painterly; he is famous for incorporating such media as encaustic and plaster relief in his paintings. Johns played with and presented opposites, contradictions, paradoxes, and ironies, much like Marcel Duchamp (who was associated with the Dada movement). Johns also produces intaglio prints, sculptures and lithographs with similar motifs.

Johns' breakthrough move, which was to inform much later work by others, was to appropriate popular iconography for painting, thus allowing a set of familiar associations to answer the need for subject. Though the Abstract Expressionists disdained subject matter, it could be argued that in the end, they had simply changed subjects. Johns neutralized the subject, so that something like a pure Jasper Johns, , 1961. Museum of painted surface could declare itself. For twenty years after Johns painted Flag, the surface could Modern Art New York City. Flags, maps, suffice – for example, in 's silkscreens, or in Robert Irwin's illuminated ambient works. targets, stenciled words and numbers were themes used by Johns in the 1960s. Abstract Expressionist figures like and subscribed to the concept of a macho "artist hero," and their paintings are indexical in that they stand effectively as a signature on canvas. In contrast, Neo-Dadaists like Johns and Rauschenberg seemed preoccupied with a lessening of the reliance of their art on indexical qualities, seeking instead to create meaning solely through the use of conventional symbols. Some have interpreted this as a rejection of the hallowed individualism of the Abstract Expressionists. Their works also imply symbols existing outside of any referential context. Johns' Flag, for instance, is primarily a visual object, divorced from its symbolic connotations and reduced to something in-itself.

Sculpture

Johns makes his sculptures in wax first, working the surfaces in a complex pattern of textures, often layering collaged elements such as impressions of newsprint, or of a key, a cast of his friend Merce Cunningham’s foot, or one of his own hand. He then casts the waxes in bronze, and, finally, works over the surface again, applying the patina.[11] Flashlight is one of his Johns' earliest pedestal-based sculptures.[12] One sculpture, a double- sided relief titled Fragment of a Letter (2009), incorporates part of a letter from to his friend, the artist Émile Bernard. Using blocks of type, Johns pressed the letters of van Gogh’s words into the wax. On the other side he spelled out the letter in the American Sign Language alphabet with stamps he made himself. Finally, he signed his name in the wax with his hands in sign language.[13] Numbers (2007) is the largest single bronze Johns has made and depicts his now classic pattern of stenciled numerals repeated in a grid.[14]

Prints

Since 1960 Johns has worked closely with Universal Limited Art Editions, Inc (ULAE) in a variety of printmaking techniques to investigate and develop existing compositions.[15] Initially, lithography suited Johns and enabled him to create print versions of iconic depiction of flags, maps, and targets that filled his paintings. In 1971, Johns became the first artist at ULAE to use the handfed offset lithographic press, resulting in Decoy -an image realized in printmaking before it was made in drawing or painting. However, apart from the Lead Reliefs series of 1969, he has concentrated his efforts on lithography at Gemini G.E.L.[16] In 1976, Johns partnered with writer Samuel Beckett to create Foirades/; the book includes 33 etchings, which revisit an earlier work by Johns and five text fragments by Beckett. He has also worked with Atelier Crommelynck in Paris, in association with Petersburg Press of London and New York; and Simca Print Artists in New York.[17]

Commissions

In 1964, architect Philip Johnson, a friend, commissioned Johns to make a piece for what is now the H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center.[18] After presiding over the theatre’s lobby for 35 years, Numbers (1964), an enormous 9-foot-by-7-foot grid of numerals, was supposed to be sold by the center for a reported $15m. Art historians consider Numbers a historically important work in part because it is the largest of the artist's numbers motifs and the only one where each unit is on a separate stretcher, fashioned from a material called Sculpmetal, which was chosen by the artist for its durability.[19] Responding to widespread criticism, the board of Lincoln Center had to drop its selling plans.[20]

Collections

In 1998, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York bought Johns' . While the Met would not disclose how much was paid, "experts estimate [the painting's] value at more than $20 million."[21] The National Gallery of Art acquired about 1,700 of Johns' proofs in 2007. This made the Gallery home to the largest number of Johns' works held by a single institution. The exhibition showed works from many points in Johns' career, including recent proofs of his prints. [22] The Greenville County Museum of Art in Greenville, South Carolina, has several of his pieces in their permanent collection.

Recognition

Johns was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984.[23] In 1990, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. On February 15, 2011 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, becoming the first painter or sculptor to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom since in 1977.

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Art market

Since the 1980s, Johns produces paintings at four to five a year, sometimes not at all during a year. His large scale paintings are much favored by collectors and because of their rarity, it is known that Johns' works are extremely difficult to acquire. His works from the mid to late 1950s, typically viewed as his period of rebellion against Abstract Expressionism, remain his most sought after.[24] Skate’s Art Market Research (Skate Press, Ltd.), a New York based advisory firm servicing private and institutional investors in the art market, has ranked Jasper Johns as the 30th most valuable artist.[25] The firm’s index of the 1,000 most valuable works of art sold at auction – Skate’s Top 1000 – contains 7 works by Johns.

Already in 1980 the Whitney Museum of American Art spent $1 million for Three Flags (1958), then the highest price ever paid for the work of a living artist.[10] In 2006, private collectors Anne and Kenneth Griffin (founder of the Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel LLC) bought Johns' False Start (1959) from David Geffen[24] for $80 million, making it the most expensive painting by a living artist.[10]

Between 1957 and 1999, Johns had sold his work through Leo Castelli.[26] Since 2000, he has been represented by the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York City, and in the spring 2008, a ten-year retrospective of Johns' was mounted there.

Other work

■ Flag (1954–55) ■ Device (1962-3) ■ White Flag (1955)[27] ■ Periscope (Hart Crane) (1963) ■ Target with Plaster Casts (1955) ■ Figure Five (1963–64) ■ Target with Four Faces" (1955) ■ The Critic Sees (1964) ■ Numbers in Color (1958–59) ■ Voice (1967) ■ False Start (1959) ■ Skull (1973) ■ Three Flags (1958) ■ Titanic (1976–78) ■ Coathanger (1960) ■ Tantric Detail (1980) ■ Painting With Two Balls (1960) ■ Perilous Night (1982) ■ Painted Bronze (1960) ■ Seasons (1986) ■ Study for Skin (1962)

In popular culture

■ In “Mom and Pop Art”, a 1999 episode of the animated television series , Johns guest stars as himself. ■ In the Undergrads episode “Drunks”, Gimpy complains that the students he creates fake ids for do not appreciate his art. One of his “customers” rebuffs him, calling him Jasper Johns and stating that he only cares about getting a drink.

References

Notes

1. ^ Georgian Encyclopedia.org (http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3436) , New Georgia Encyclopedia 16 January 2009. 2. ^ abFinkel, Jori. Artist Dossier: Jasper Johns (http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/31232/jasper-johns/) . May 2009, Art+Auction. 3. ^ abcdJasper Johns (born 1930) (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/john/hd_john.htm) ; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 4. ^ Horne, Peter; Lewis, Reina (1996). Outlooks: lesbian and gay sexualities and visual cultures. Routledge. p. 43. ISBN 978-0-415-12468-3. "Rauschenberg, who was better known in 1963 than Warhol was, and Jasper Johns were both prototypical Pop artists as well as gay men; they also were lovers." 5. ^ Gay Artist Robert Rauschenberg Dead at 82 (http://www.advocate.com/article.aspx?id=42690) . The Advocate. 14 May 2008. http://www.advocate.com/article.aspx?id=42690. "He met Jasper Johns in 1954. He and the younger artist, both destined to become world-famous, became lovers and influenced each other's work. According to the book Lives of the Great 20th Century Artists, Rauschenberg told biographer that 'Jasper and I literally traded ideas. He would say, 'I've got a terrific idea for you,' and then I'd have to find one for him.'" 6. ^ Zongker, Brett (1 November 2010). "Smithsonian explores impact of gays on art history". The Associated Press. "When artist Jasper Johns was mourning the end of his relationship with Robert Rauschenberg, he took one of his famous flag paintings, made it black, and dangled a fork and spoon together from the top. Hidden symbols in Johns' "In Memory of My Feelings," tell part of story, said. Color from the relationship is gone. A fork and spoon elsewhere in the painting are separated. Here we have a coded glimpse into a six-year relationship that was rarely acknowledged even in Rauschenberg's 2008 obituary. The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery is decoding such history from abstract paintings and portraits in the first major museum exhibit to show how sexual orientation and gender identity have shaped American art." 7. ^ Vaughan, David (27 July 2009). "Obituary: Merce Cunningham" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/jul/27/obituary-merce-cunningham) . The Observer. http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/jul/27/obituary-merce-cunningham. 8. ^ Lanchner, Carolyn; Johns, Jasper (2010). Jasper Johns. The Museum of Modern Art. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-87070-768-1 9. ^ Betti-Sue Hertz. “Jasper Johns' Green Angel: The Making of A Print” (http://www.tfaoi.org/aa/7aa/7aa81.htm) Resource Library (San Diego Museum of Art) January 29, 2007. 10. ^ abcVogel, Carol (February 3, 2008). "The Gray Areas of Jasper Johns" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/arts/design/03voge.html?ref=arts) . New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/arts/design/03voge.html?ref=arts. Retrieved 2008-02-03. 11. ^ Jasper Johns: Numbers, 0-9, and 5 Postcards, November 2, 2012 - January 5, 2013 (http://www.matthewmarks.com/los-angeles/exhibitions/2012-11- 02_jasper-johns/) Matthew Marks Gallery, Los Angeles. 12. ^ Jasper Johns, Flashlight (1960/1988) (http://collections.walkerart.org/item/object/8484) Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

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13. ^ Jasper Johns: New Sculpture and Works on Paper, May 7 - July 1, 2011 (http://www.matthewmarks.com/new-york/exhibitions/2011-05-07_jasper-johns/) Matthew Marks Gallery, New York. 14. ^ Jasper Johns: Numbers, 0-9, and 5 Postcards, November 2, 2012 - January 5, 2013 (http://www.matthewmarks.com/los-angeles/exhibitions/2012-11- 02_jasper-johns/) Matthew Marks Gallery, Los Angeles. 15. ^ Jasper Johns: Prints 1987 - 2001, April 24 - June 7, 2003 (http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/april-24-2003--jasper-johns) , London. 16. ^ Gemini G.E.L.: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1966–2005 | Jasper Johns (http://www.nga.gov/gemini/essay6.htm) National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. 17. ^ Johns: The Prints, February 2 – April 13, 2008 (http://mmoca.org/exhibitions/exhibitdetails/jasperjohns/index.phpJasper) Madison Museum of . 18. ^ Julie Belcove (April 29, 2011), Meaning in the making (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/f35b2c44-711f-11e0-acf5-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1vnLAX3vz) Financial Times. 19. ^ Frank DiGiacomo (January 18, 1999), Art in the Gilded Age: Lincoln Center Czars Hang Up Jasper Johns (http://observer.com/1999/01/art-in-the-gilded- age-lincoln-center-czars-hang-up-jasper-johns/) New York Observer. 20. ^ Carol Vogel (January 26, 1999), Lincoln Center Drops Plan to Sell Its Jasper Johns Painting (http://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/26/nyregion/lincoln-center -drops-plan-to-sell-its-jasper-johns-painting.html) New York Times. 21. ^ Vogel, Carol (October 29, 1998). "Met Buys Its First Painting by Jasper Johns" (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html? res=9E07E6D6113CF93AA15753C1A96E958260) . New York Times (New York Times). http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html? res=9E07E6D6113CF93AA15753C1A96E958260. Retrieved 2008-02-28. 22. ^ Brett Zongker (March 6, 2007). National Gallery to Get Jasper Johns Prints (http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/24455/national-gallery-to-get-jasper- johns-prints/) . The Associated Press. http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/24455/national-gallery-to-get-jasper-johns-prints/. Retrieved 2008-04-16 23. ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter J" (http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterJ.pdf) . American Academy of Arts and Sciences. http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterJ.pdf. Retrieved June 2, 2011. 24. ^ abJori Finkel (May 14, 2009), Jasper Johns (http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/31232/jasper-johns/) ARTINFO. 25. ^ SkatePress.com (http://www.skatepress.com/index.php?cat=28) 26. ^ Eric Konigsberg (May 21, 2005), Marks Nabs Johns (http://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/art/11892/) New York Magazine. 27. ^ Works of Art: Modern Art (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1998.329) Metropolitan Museum of Art, online June 15, 2007

Bibliography

■ Busch, Julia M., A Decade of Sculpture: the New Media in the 1960s (http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/ow/4ed0b0bd878eaf2a.html) (The Art Alliance Press: Philadelphia; Associated University Presses (http://www.aupresses.com/) : London, 1974) ISBN 0-87982-007-1

Further reading

■ Bernstein, Roberta. Jasper Johns' Paintings and Sculptures, 1954–1974: "The Changing Focus of the Eye.". Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985. ■ Bernstein, Roberta; Tone, Lilian; Johns, Jasper and Varnedoe, Kirk. Jasper Johns: A Retrospective, The Museum of Modern Art, 2006. ■ Castleman, Riva. Japser Johns: A Print Retrospetive. The Museum of Modern Art 1986. ■ Crichton, Michael. Jasper Johns, Whitney/Abrams, 1977 (out of print). ■ Johns, Jasper; Varnedoe, Kirk; Hollevoet, Christel; and Frank, Robert. Jasper Johns: Writings, Sketchbook Notes, Interviews (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0810961660) , The Museum of Modern Art, 2002 (out of print). ■ Kozloff, Max. Jasper Johns, Abrams, 1972. (out of print) ■ Krauss, Rosalind E. and Knight, Christopher. "Split decisions: Jasper Johns in retrospect" Artforum, September 1996. Findarticles.com (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_n1_v35/ai_18749506/?tag=content;col1) ■ Orton, Fred. Figuring Jasper Johns, Reaktion Books, 1994. ■ Pearlman, Debra. Where Is Jasper Johns? (Adventures in Art), Prestel Publishing, 2006. ■ Rosenberg, Harold. "Jasper Johns: Things the Mind Already Knows". Vogue, 1964. ■ Shapiro, David. Jasper Johns Drawings 1954-1984. Abrams 1984 (out of print). ■ Steinberg, Leo. Jasper Johns. New York: George Wittenborn, 1963. ■ Tomkins, Calvin. Off the Wall: Robert Rauschenberg and the Artworld of our time. Doubleday. 1980. ■ Weiss, Jeffrey. Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting, 1955-1965, Yale University Press, 2007. ■ Yau, John. A Thing Among Things: The Art of Jasper Johns (http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/015_04/3013) , D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2008.

External links

■ Jasper Johns in the National Gallery of Australia's Kenneth Tyler collection (http://nga.gov.au/internationalprints/tyler/Default.cfm? MnuID=3&ArtistIRN=17689&List=True&CREIRN=17689&ORDER_SELECT=13&VIEW_SELECT=5&GrpNam=12&TNOTES=TRUE) ■ Jasper Johns artwork at Brooke Alexander Gallery (http://www.baeditions.com/jasper-johns-artwork.htm) ■ Jasper Johns at the Matthew Marks Gallery (http://www.matthewmarks.com/index.php?n=1&a=147&im=1) ■ "The work of Jasper Johns at the National Gallery" (http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/8473) Jeffery Weiss discusses the Johns exhibition at the National Gallery. Charlie Rose show April 2007. ■ VAGA – To clear rights to reproduce works by Johns (http://www.vaga.org) ■ Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting, 1955–1965, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2007/johns/index.shtm) ■ States and Variations: Prints by Jasper Johns at the National Gallery of Art (http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2007/jasper/index.shtm) ■ Jasper Johns (born 1930) (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/john/hd_john.htm) History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art ■ Jasper Johns (http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=2923) at the Museum of Modern Art ■ Jasper Johns bio at artchive.com (http://www.artchive.com/artchive/J/johnsbio.html) ■ Flag at the Museum of Modern Art (http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/1996/johns/pages/johns.flag.html) ■ White Flag at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/viewone.asp? dep=21&viewmode=0&item=1998.329)

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■ Lifetime Honors – National Medal of Arts (http://www.nea.gov/honors/medals/medalists_year.html#90) ■ PBS Jasper Johns 2008 (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/jasper-johns/about-the-painter/54/)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jasper_Johns&oldid=526600770" Categories: 1930 births American painters American printmakers Contemporary painters Living people Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Artists from New York People from Augusta, Georgia People from South Carolina Pop artists Postmodern artists Artists from South Carolina LGBT artists from the United States Gay artists United States National Medal of Arts recipients Parsons School of Design alumni Wolf Prize in Arts laureates Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

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Synopsis Jasper Johns, a major post-war, American artist still creating new, inventive work, was a key force shaping the artistic movements following Abstract Expressionism. Best known for his paintings and lithographs of flags, maps and numbers, Johns also integrated sculptural elements, displaying everyday objects in new artistic light. This aesthetic of utilizing, but subverting, recognizable images laid the foundation for later movements such as Pop art.

Key Ideas / Information

• Jasper Johns' early work drew on Abstract Expressionism's ideas and techniques, but he took the in a new direction by endowing everyday objects with artistic importance, paving the way for Pop art and . • His integration of collage, sculptural elements and thickly applied wax and paint in his works created an important challenge to traditional definitions of both paintings and objects.

Childhood Born in 1930 in Augusta, Georgia, Johns grew up throughout rural South Carolina, living with various relatives after his parents divorced before he was three years old. While living with his grandfather until the age of nine, the paintings of his grandmother, who had died before he was born, provided his only knowledge of art. Still, Johns began drawing at a very young age, with a vague intention of wanting to become an artist. Yet, he has said, "I don't think I knew what it meant.. I knew I couldn't be an artist where I was, so it meant I would get to be somewhere else." For much of his early childhood, which was marked by isolation and frequent moves, his aunt taught him and two other students in a one-room schoolhouse; he had no formal art training until later in life.

Early Training After several brief stints studying art - first at the University of South Carolina in 1947, and then at the Parsons School of Design in New York in 1948 -- Johns was drafted into the Army; he spent 1951- 1953 in service in both South Carolina and Japan. Upon returning to New York, he met Robert Rauschenberg, with whom he had an

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intense relationship, both personal and artistic, from 1954 to 1961. Johns has noted that he "learned what an artist was from watching [Rauschenberg]." Living in the same building, and "the main audience for each other's work," the two deeply influenced each other's artwork, exchanging ideas and techniques that broke from Abstract Expressionism. The pair's close friendships with composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham, and their subsequent collaborations for Cunningham's modern company, also shaped Johns' painting during this period. Additionally, the Abstract Expressionists' work heavily influenced Johns, as did that of other artists such as Picasso and Cézanne, but Johns synthesized these ideas into a new artistic aesthetic that favored concrete images over abstractions, a significant change within the art world.

Mature Period Johns' relationship with Rauschenberg led him to his first art show in 1958 at just 28 years old after Rauschenberg introduced Johns to gallery owner Leo Castelli. The show featured Johns' first major painting Flag, as well as other variations on the American flag theme - an idea that first came to him in a dream. This series of works, along with his paintings of targets, letters and numbers, catapulted Johns into the public eye and established him as a contradiction to the non-figurative Abstract Expressionism. Marking his instant recognition within the New York art scene, the Museum of Modern Art bought three pieces from that first show, a purchase highly uncommon for work by a young, unknown artist.

While certainly drawing on the abstract brushstrokes and textures of the Abstract Expressionists, Johns' work also marked a new artistic direction by depicting ordinary and recognizable objects, or "things the mind already knows," as he has said. Yet, at the same time, he portrayed these everyday objects in a very non-representational manner, endowing them with new, often ambiguous meanings; in this sense, his work simultaneously expanded and rejected Abstract Expressionism. His efforts at transforming paintings into objects, and objects into paintings, would ultimately help lead the way to Pop art.

With the Pop art movement growing around him in the 60s, Johns left behind the colorful abstractions he had created after the Castelli show (including the images of maps) and turned to a darker palette. He also started creating prints, some of which echoed his previous subjects. Sculpture, particularly using found objects, as inspired by Duchamp's "readymades," had always been an important part of Johns' work, and he began to further integrate physical, sculptural elements into his paintings.

Late Period In the 1970s, Johns started utilizing the style of crosshatching, or line clusters, to fill his canvases; this style appeared in many of his well-known images of paintbrushes in a Savarin coffee can, which were based on his earlier sculpture of the same object. Johns' focus changed once again in the 80s and 90s, and his paintings illustrated a more autobiographical, introspective edge, although, Johns has pointed out, "There is a period in

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which I began to use images from my life, but everything you use is from your life." Some of Johns' more recent paintings employ the idea of the catenary (or curve), created with hanging pieces of string attached to the canvas at two points. He has also been working again with the flagstone imagery he had used earlier in his career. Johns continues to create new work at his homes in Connecticut and St. Martin, and is currently represented by Matthew Marks Gallery in New York.

Legacy Often considered part of a Neo-Dadaist movement, Johns bridged the gap between Abstract Expressionism and Pop art during his early career, but is still expanding his subjects, materials and styles through his current work. He remains a major figure in contemporary American Art; his 1959 work False Start sold for $17 million at auction in 1988 (then the highest price paid for a living artist's work), and was sold privately for $80 million in 2006, making it the most expensive painting by a living artist. Johns' paintings, sculptures, lithographs and etchings can be found in nearly every major American , including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as in numerous other collections worldwide. ARTISTIC INFLUENCES

Below are Jasper Johns' major influences, and the people and ideas that he influenced in turn.

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ARTISTS FRIENDS MOVEMENTS

Marcel Duchamp

Pablo Picasso

Paul Cézanne Robert Rauschenberg

Willem De John Cage Abstract Kooning Expressionism

Arshile Merce Dada Gorky Cunningham

Jasper Johns Years Worked: 1954 - present

ARTISTS FRIENDS MOVEMENTS

Robert John Cage Pop Art Rauschenberg

Andy Warhol Merce Minimalism Cunningham

Claes Conceptual Oldenburg Art

Frank Stella

Roy Lichtenstein

Quotes "I tend to like things that already exist."

"Do something, do something to that, and then do something to that."

"I feel that works of art are an opportunity for people to construct meaning, so I don't usually tell what they mean. It conveys to people that they have to participate."

"Early on I was very involved with the notion of the painting as an object and tended to attack

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that idea from different directions."

ARTWORKS:

Title: Flag Year: 1954-55 Materials: Encaustic, oil and collage on fabric mounted on plywood Description: Flag, Johns' first major work, broke from the gestural style of the Abstract Expressionists by portraying a recognizable, everyday object. Yet, the painting is also abstract in its many textures, layers and materials, including strips of newspaper painted over with encaustic, and the rough brush strokes that create a painterly, expressive surface. Through technique, Johns turns a real flag, a three-dimensional object, into a two-dimensional painting. Collection: The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Title: Target with Four Faces Year: 1955 Materials: Encaustic on newspaper and cloth over canvas surmounted by four tinted-plaster faces in wood box with hinged front Description: Johns uses the target in several works to create an image that is simultaneously familiar and ambiguous. In this painting, he creates depth and tactility by thickly applying wax- based paint and integrating sculptural elements, both common features in his work. By attaching a hinged wooden lid that can cover or reveal the four mounted plaster face casts, Johns adds interactivity and complexity to the painting. Collection: The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Title: False Start Year: 1959 Materials: Oil on canvas Description: Stenciled letters, here spelling out names of colors, is a frequent technique in Johns' paintings of this period. Here, mismatching the colors and color names transforms the words themselves into a type of object. False Start also depicts what Johns calls "brushmarking." Although he carefully plans the composition of his paintings, he often used this gestural technique of applying small sections of paint according to arbitrary arm movements. Purchased privately for $80 million, this artwork is currently the most highly valued by a living artist. Collection: , New York

Title: SAVARIN Year: 1977 Materials: Lithograph Description: Johns repeatedly used the Savarin coffee can filled with paintbrushes in his work, first as a life-sized bronze sculpture in 1960, and subsequently as a subject for paintings and prints. In this lithograph, Johns depicts his subject outlined by the technique of crosshatching, or applying color in line clusters, a style he used in many lithographs and paintings during this period. Collection: The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Title: The Seasons (Summer) Year: 1987 Materials: Etching with aquatint Description: Along with four large paintings entitled The Seasons, which evoke man's four seasons of life, Johns created many accompanying prints and etchings, all of which marked a move toward more autobiographical themes. In ummer, Johns references his past works and

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techniques, as well as specific artistic influences, such as Picasso, da Vinci and Duchamp. He also fills the entire left side of the print with a silhouette traced from his own shadow. Such imagery of shadows and duplicates are recurring themes in Johns' other works, as well. Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Title: Catenary (Jacob's Ladder) Year: 1999 Materials: Encaustic on canvas and wood with objects Description: In the works from Johns' largely monochromatic series focusing on the idea of a catenary, or curve, cords hang loosely between two fixed points on the canvas. Many of the works in this series also include collage and personal references. Even in these recent paintings, Rauschenberg's influence on Johns' work is still evident, with the merging of wood, string, collage and paint echoing Rauschenberg's combines. Collection: Collection of the artist

Content written by: Rachel Gershman

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http://www.theartstory.org/print.html?artist=johns&artist_id=johns_jasper&artist_name=J... 12/7/2012 Jasper Johns (born 1930) | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metr... Page 1 of 2

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Jasper Johns (born 1930)

Jasper Johns was born in 1930 in Augusta, Georgia, and raised in South Carolina. He began drawing as a young child, and from the age of five knew he wanted to be an artist. For three semesters he attended the University of South Carolina at Columbia, where his art teachers urged him to move to New York, which he did in late 1948. There he saw numerous exhibitions and attended the Parsons School of Design for a semester. After serving two years in the army during the Korean War, stationed in South Carolina and Sendai, Japan, he returned to New York in 1953. He soon became friends with the artist Robert Rauschenberg (born 1925), also a Southerner, and with the composer John Cage and the choreographer Merce Cunningham.

Together with Rauschenberg and several Abstract Expressionist painters of the previous generation, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Barnett Newman, Johns is one of most significant and influential American painters of the twentieth century. He also ranks with Dürer, , Goya, Munch, and Picasso as one of the greatest printmakers of any era. In addition, he makes many drawings—unique works on paper, usually based on a painting he has previously painted—and he has created an unusual body of sculptural objects.

Johns' early mature work, of the mid- to late 1950s, invented a new style that helped to engender a number of subsequent art movements, among them Pop, Minimal, and Conceptual art. The new style has usually been understood to be coolly antithetical to the expressionistic gestural abstraction of the previous generation. This is partly because, while Johns' painting extended the allover compositional techniques of Abstract Expressionism, his use of these techniques stresses conscious control rather than spontaneity.

Johns' early style is perfectly exemplified by the lush reticence of the large monochrome White Flag of 1955 (1998.329). This painting was preceded by a red, white, and blue version, Flag (1954–55; Museum of Modern Art, New York), and followed by numerous drawings and prints of flags in various mediums, including the elegant oil on paper Flag (1957; 1999.425). In 1958, Johns painted Three Flags (Whitney Museum of Art, New York), in which three canvases are superimposed on one another in what appears to be reverse perspective, projecting toward the viewer.

The American flag subject is typical of Johns' use of quotidian imagery in the mid- to late 1950s. As he explained, the imagery derives from "things the mind already knows," utterly familiar icons such as flags, targets, stenciled numbers, ale cans, and, slightly later, maps of the U.S.

It has been suggested that the American flag in Johns' work is an autobiographical reference, because a military hero after whom he was named, Sergeant William Jasper, raised the flag in a brave action during the Revolutionary War. Because a flag is a flat object, it may signify flatness or the relative lack of depth in much modernist painting. The flag may of course function as an emblem of the United States and may in turn connote American art, Senator Joseph McCarthy, or the Vietnam War, depending on the date of Johns' use of the image, the date of the viewer's experience of it, or the nationality of the viewer. Or the flag may connote none of these things. Used in Johns' recent work, for example, The Seasons (Summer), an intaglio print of 1987 (1999.407b), it seems inescapably to refer to his own art. In other words, the meaning of the flag in Johns' art suggests the extent to which the "meaning" of this subject matter may be fluid and open to continual reinterpretation.

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As Johns became well known—and perhaps as he realized his audience could be relied upon to study his new work—his subjects with a demonstrable prior existence expanded. In addition to popular icons, Johns chose images that he identified in interviews as things he had seen—for example, a pattern of flagstones he glimpsed on a wall while driving. Still later, the "things the mind already knows" became details from famous works of art, such as the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald (1475/80–1528), which Johns began to trace onto his work in 1981. Throughout his career, Johns has included in most of his art certain marks and shapes that clearly display their derivation from factual, unimagined things in the world, including handprints and footprints, casts of parts of the body, or stamps made from objects found in his studio, such as the rim of a tin can.

Nan Rosenthal Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Citation Rosenthal, Nan. "Jasper Johns (born 1930)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/john/hd_john.htm (October 2004)

Further Reading Bernstein, Roberta. Jasper Johns' Paintings and Sculptures, 1954–1974: "The Changing Focus of the Eye.". Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985. Crichton, Michael. Jasper Johns. New York: Abrams, 1994. Rosenthal, Nan, and Ruth E. Fine. The Drawings of Jasper Johns. Exhibition catalogue. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1990. Varnedoe, Kirk. Jasper Johns: A Retrospective. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1996.

Related exhibitions and online features Special Exhibitions (including upcoming, current, and past exhibitions) : Prints from the Collection, 1987–2002 The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions Roxy Paine on the Roof: Maelstrom

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