Jasper Johns

For the Welsh Liberal politician, see Jasper Wilson Johns.

Jasper Johns
Flag, Encaustic, oil and collage on fabric mounted on plywood,1954-55
Born	(1930-05-15) May 15, 1930 Augusta, Georgia, U.S.
Nationality	American
Known for	Painting, Printmaking
Notable work	Flag, Numbers, Map, stenciled words
Movement	Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Dada, Pop Art
Awards	(1988) Awarded the Grand Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennial Artist of the year (1989) Awards By MIR (1990) National Medal of Arts (2011) Presidential Medal of Freedom

Detail of Flag (1954-55). Museum of Modern Art, New York City. This image illustrates Johns' early technique of painting with thick, dripping encaustic over a collage made from found materials such as newspaper. This rough method of construction is rarely visible in photographic reproductions of his work.

Jasper Johns, Map, 1961. Museum of Modern Art New York City. Flags, maps, targets, stenciled words and numbers were themes used by Johns in the 1960s.

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

Life

Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed. He then spent a year living with his mother in Columbia, South Carolina and thereafter he spent several years living with his aunt Gladys in Lake Murray, South Carolina, twenty-two miles from Columbia. He completed high school in Sumter, South Carolina, where he once again lived with his mother. Recounting this 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.

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

In 1954, after returning to New York, Johns met Robert Rauschenberg and they became long term lovers. In the same period he was strongly influenced by the gay couple Merce Cunningham (a choreographer) and John Cage (a composer). Working together they explored the contemporary art scene, and began developing their ideas on art. In 1958, gallery owner Leo Castelli discovered Johns while visiting Rauschenberg's studio. 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. 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. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984.

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 Alexander Calder in 1977.

Work

He is best known for his painting Flag (1954–55), which he painted after having a dream of the American flag. His work is often described as a Neo-Dadaist, as opposed to pop art, even though his subject matter often includes images and objects from popular culture. Still, many compilations on pop art include Jasper Johns as a pop artist because of his artistic use of classical iconography.

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 painted surface could declare itself. For twenty years after Johns painted Flag, the surface could suffice – for example, in Andy Warhol's silkscreens, or in Robert Irwin's illuminated ambient works.

Abstract Expressionist figures like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning ascribed 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.

In 1990, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. He is represented by the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York City, and in the spring 2008, a ten-year retrospective of Johns' drawings was mounted there.

Collection and acquisition

In 1998, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York bought Johns' White Flag. While the Met would not disclose how much was paid, "experts estimate [the painting's] value at more than $20 million." In 2006, private collectors Anne and Kenneth Griffin (founder of the Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel LLC) bought Johns' False Start for $80 million, making it the most expensive painting by a living artist.

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.

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.

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. 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.

The Greenville County Museum of Art in Greenville, South Carolina, has several of his pieces in their permanent collection.

Other work

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

Appearance in popular culture

In 1999, Jasper Johns guest-starred in the animated television series The Simpsons, as himself. In the episode "Mom and Pop Art", Homer Simpson is hailed as an "outsider artist" after an art dealer discovers Homer's mangled brick barbecue grill, and Johns attends one of his exhibitions. Johns is portrayed as a kleptomaniac, constantly stealing food items, lightbulbs, a motorboat, and Marge's painting of the flooded town.

References

• Busch, Julia M., A Decade of Sculpture: the New Media in the 1960s (The Art Alliance Press: Philadelphia; Associated University Presses: London, 1974) ISBN 0-87982-007-1

Suggested readings

• Roberta Bernstein, Lilian Tone, Jasper Johns, and Kirk Varnedoe. Jasper Johns: A Retrospective, The Museum of Modern Art, 2006.
• Jeffrey Weiss. Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting, 1955-1965, Yale University Press, 2007.
• John Yau. A Thing Among Things: The Art of Jasper Johns, D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2008.
• Max Kozloff. Jasper Johns, Abrams, 1972. (out of print)
• Michael Crichton. Jasper Johns, Whitney/Abrams, 1977 (out of print).
• Debra Pearlman. Where Is Jasper Johns? (Adventures in Art), Prestel Publishing, 2006.
• Fred Orton. Figuring Jasper Johns, Reaktion Books, 1994.
• Jasper Johns, Kirk Varnedoe, Christel Hollevoet, and Robert Frank. Jasper Johns: Writings, Sketchbook Notes, Interviews, The Museum of Modern Art, 2002 (out of print).
• David Shapiro. Jasper Johns Drawings 1954-1984. Abrams 1984 (out of print).
• Riva Castleman. Japser Johns a print retrospetive. The Museum of Modern Art 1986.
• Rosalind E. Krauss and Christopher Knight. “Split decisions: Jasper Johns in retrospect” Artforum, September 1996. Findarticles.com
• Harold Rosenberg. "Jasper Johns: Things the Mind Already Knows,". Vogue, 1964.
• Roberta Bernstein. Jasper Johns' Paintings and Sculptures, 1954–1974: "The Changing Focus of the Eye.". Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985.
• Calvin Tomkins. Off the Wall: Robert Rauschenberg and the Artworld of our time. Doubleday. 1980.

External links

• Jasper Johns artwork at Brooke Alexander Gallery
• Jasper Johns at the Matthew Marks Gallery
• Jasper Johns Prints at Joseph K. Levene Fine Art, Ltd.
• "The work of Jasper Johns at the National Gallery" Curator Jeffery Weiss discusses the Johns exhibition at the National Gallery. Charlie Rose show April 2007.
• VAGA – To clear rights to reproduce works by Johns
• Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting, 1955–1965, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
• States and Variations: Prints by Jasper Johns at the National Gallery of Art
• Jasper Johns (born 1930) Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Jasper Johns at the Museum of Modern Art
• Jasper Johns bio at artchive.com
• Flag at the Museum of Modern Art
• White Flag at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Collecting Jasper Johns's signature
• False Start Act out a Jasper Johns painting.
• Lifetime Honors – National Medal of Arts