Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930) is an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker whose work is associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and pop art. He is well known for his depictions of the American flag and other US-related topics. Johns's works regularly sell for millions of dollars at sale and auction, including a reported $110 million sale in 2010. At multiple times works by Johns have held the title of most paid for a work by a living artist. Johns has received many honors throughout his career, including receipt of the National Medal of  Arts in 1990, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2007. In 2018, "The New York Times" called him the United States' "foremost living artist." 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 Edmunds High School (now Sumter  High School) class of 1947 in Sumter, South Carolina, where he once again lived with his mother. Recounting this period in his life, he once said, "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." Johns studied a total of three semesters at the University of South Carolina, from 1947 to 1948. 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. For a time they lived in the same building as Rachel Rosenthal. 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 . “And we went down," Castelli remembered. "And then I was confronted with that miraculous array of unprecedented images -- flags, red, white and blue... All white... Large ones... small ones, targets... numbers, alphabets. Just an incredible sight ... Something one could not imagine, new and out of the blue." Castelli immediately offered Johns 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 this show. In 1960 he received the Vincent van Volkmer Prize. In 1963, Johns and Cage founded the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, now  known as the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York City. Johns currently lives in Sharon, Connecticut, and on the island of Saint Martin. Until 2012, he lived in a rustic 1930s farmhouse with a glass-walled studio in Stony Point, New York. He first began visiting Saint Martin in the late 1960s and bought the property there in 1972. The architect Philip Johnson is the principal designer of his Saint Martin home, a long, white, rectangular structure divided into three distinct sections. Work. Painting. Johns is best known for his series of flags, maps, targets, letters and numbers, a  practice he began in 1954 after burning all his previous artwork. He started introducing text and numbers into his abstract paintings, such as "Gray Numbers" (1957) and "False Start" (1959), thus reinstating content. His use of defined or extant symbols differentiated his paintings from the gestural abstraction of the Abstract Expressionists, whose paintings were often understood as expressive of the individual personality or psychology of the artist. Because Johns imported well-known motifs into the fine arts, his paintings could be read as both representational (a flag, a target) and as abstract patterns (stripes, circles). Some art historians and museums  characterize his choice of subjects as freeing him from decisions about composition. Johns has remarked: "What’s interesting to me is the fact that it isn’t designed, but taken. It’s not mine,” or, that these motifs are "things the mind already knows." His encaustic painting "Flag" (1954–55), which he painted after having a dream of the American flag, marks the beginning of this new period. "Flag" allowed Johns to create a painting that was not completely abstract because it depicted a symbol (the American flag), yet drew attention to the graphic design of the symbol itself; was not  personal because it was a national symbol, and yet, retained a sense of the handmade in the wax brushstrokes; and was not itself a literal flag, yet was not simply a painting. The painting raises a set of complex questions with no clear answers through its combination of symbol and medium. Museum of Modern Art director Alfred H. Barr had to convince the museum trustees to buy the painting, as they were afraid its ambiguity might lead to boycott or attack by patriotic groups. Johns has made over forty variations of American flag paintings. He also often used plaster reliefs  in his paintings (such as "Targets with Four Faces", 1955), which challenge typical conceptions of paintings as two-dimensional. Johns often used encaustic as a painting method to create bumpy, textured surfaces unusual in painting. Johns' 2020 work "Slice", which includes a drawing of a knee by Jéan-Marc Togodgue, a Cameroonian emigre student basketball player who attends the Salisbury School near John's estate in Sharon, came about after the astrophysicist Margaret Geller sent him a letter in 2018 noting how much she enjoyed his painting "Mirror’s Edge 2". Johns use of Togodgue's artwork without first asking  him led to a lawsuit which was then settled amicably by the parties in an out of court for an undisclosed sum. 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. "Flashlight" is one of his earliest pedestal-based sculptures. One sculpture, a double-sided relief titled  Fragment of a Letter (2009), incorporates part of a letter from Vincent van Gogh 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. "Numbers" (2007) is the largest single bronze Johns has made and depicts his now classic pattern of stenciled numerals repeated in a grid. Prints. Johns also produces intaglio prints , sculptures and lithographs. 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. Initially, lithography suited Johns and enabled him to create print versions of iconic depictions 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. In 1976, Johns partnered with writer Samuel Beckett to create "Foirades/Fizzles"; 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. In 2000, Johns produced a limited-edition linocut for the Grenfell Press. In 1973, Johns produced a print called "Cup 2 Picasso", for "XXe siècle", a French publication. For the May 2014 issue of "Art in America", he created a black-and -white lithograph depicting many of his signature motifs, including numbers, a map of the United States and sign language. Collaborations. For decades Johns worked with others to raise both funds and attention for Merce Cunningham's choreography. He privately assisted Robert Rauschenberg in some of his 1950s designs for Cunningham. In spring 1963, Johns helped start the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, then intended to sponsor and raise funds in the performance field; the other founders were John Cage, Elaine de Kooning, the designer David Hayes, and the theater producer Lewis B. Lloyd. He is depicted as a thief who  steals whatever he can get his hands on.