Editing Jasper Johns (section)

==Work==

===Painting===
In 1954, Johns destroyed all of his previous artwork still in his possession and began the paintings for which he is best known: depictions of flags, maps, targets, letters, and numbers.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|last=Crow|first=Thomas|url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/971188663|title=The Long March of Pop : Art, Music, and Design, 1930-1995|publisher=Yale University Press|year=2015|isbn=978-0-300-20397-4|location=New Haven|pages=49–50|oclc=971188663}}</ref><ref name=":3">{{Cite web|last=Johns|first=Jasper|title=Target|url=https://www.artic.edu/artworks/229351/target|access-date=April 21, 2021|website=The Art Institute of Chicago|year=1961|language=en}}</ref> His use of such symbols differentiated his paintings from the gestural abstraction of the [[Abstract expressionism|Abstract Expressionists]], whose works were often understood as expressive of the individual personality or psychology of the artist.<ref>{{Citation|last=Durner|first=Leah|title=Gestural Abstraction and the Fleshiness of Paint|date=2004|url=https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-2643-0_14|work=Metamorphosis: Creative Imagination in Fine Arts Between Life-Projects and Human Aesthetic Aspirations|pages=187–194|editor-last=Tymieniecka|editor-first=Anna-Teresa|series=Analecta Husserliana|place=Dordrecht|publisher=Springer Netherlands|language=en|doi=10.1007/978-1-4020-2643-0_14|isbn=978-1-4020-2643-0|access-date=April 21, 2021}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last1=Stiles|first1=Kristine|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WXV-HlsUzdcC&q=gestural+abstraction+peter+selz&pg=PA11|title=Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings|last2=Selz|first2=Peter|date=1996|publisher=University of California Press| isbn=978-0-520-20251-1| location=Berkeley|pages=11|language=en}}</ref> With well-known motifs imported into his art, his paintings could be read as both [[Representation (arts)|representational]] (a flag, a target) and as [[Abstract art|abstract]] (stripes, circles).<ref name=":3" /><ref name="Met" /> Some art historians and museums characterize his choice of subjects as freeing him from decisions about composition.<ref name=":3" /> Johns has remarked: "What's interesting to me is the fact that it isn't designed, but taken. It's not mine,"<ref>{{Cite web|last=Rutherfurd|first=Chanler|date=April 20, 2018|title=The Story Behind Jasper Johns' American Flag & His Most Famous Print|url=https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/the-story-behind-jasper-johns-american-flag-his-most-famous-print|website=Sotheby's|quote=Source cited: The Prints of Jasper Johns 1960 – 1993, A Catalogue Raisonné, introduction}}</ref> or, that these motifs are "things the mind already knows."<ref name="Met" />

His early [[Encaustic painting|encaustic]] painting ''[[Flag (painting)|Flag]]'' (1954–55), painted after having a dream of it, marks the beginning of this new period.<ref name=":2" /> The motif allowed Johns to create a painting that was not completely abstract because it depicts a symbol (the American flag), yet it draws attention to the design of the symbol itself. The work evades the personal because it depicts a national symbol, and yet, it maintains a sense of the handmade in Johns's wax brushstrokes; it is neither a literal flag, nor a purely abstract painting.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Wallace|first=Isabelle Loring|title=The incredible story behind Flag by Jasper Johns|url=https://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2014/july/29/the-incredible-story-behind-flag-by-jasper-johns/|access-date=April 21, 2021|website=Phaidon}}</ref><ref name="Met" /><ref name=":2" /> The work thus raises a set of complex questions with no clear answers through its combination of symbol and medium.<ref name="Met" /><ref>{{Cite web|title=Flag - Jasper Johns|url=https://www.thebroad.org/art/jasper-johns/flag|access-date=April 21, 2021|website=The Broad}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Jones|first=Jonathan|date=October 24, 2008|title=The truth beneath Jasper Johns' stars and stripes|url=http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2008/oct/24/jasper-johns-jonathan-jones-flag|access-date=April 21, 2021|website=The Guardian|language=en}}</ref> Indeed, [[Alfred H. Barr Jr.|Alfred H. Barr]] could not convince the trustees of the [[Museum of Modern Art]] to directly acquire the painting from Johns's first solo show, as they were afraid its ambiguity might lead to boycott or attack by patriotic groups during the [[Cold War]] climate of the late 1950s.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1">{{cite web|last=Riefe|first=Jordan|date=February 21, 2018|title=Why People Still Get Worked Up About Jasper Johns's 'Flag' Painting|url=https://observer.com/2018/02/the-broad-jasper-johns-show-revisits-the-shock-of-flag-paintings/|access-date=April 21, 2021|website=Observer|language=en-US}}</ref> Barr was, however, able to arrange for the architect [[Philip Johnson]] to buy the painting and later donate it to the museum in 1973.<ref name=":4" /> The flag remains one of Johns's most enduring motifs; the art historian Roberta Bernstein recounts that "between 1954 and 2002, he employed virtually his full array of materials and techniques in twenty-seven paintings, ten individual or editioned sculptures, fifty drawings, and eighteen print editions that depict the flag as the primary image."<ref name=":4" />

Johns is also known for including three-dimensional objects in his paintings. These objects can be either found (the ruler in ''Painting with Ruler and "Gray,"'' 1960) or specifically made (the plaster reliefs in ''Target with Four Faces'', 1955). This practice challenges the typical conception of painting as a two-dimensional realm.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2011|title=Jasper Johns. Target with Four Faces. 1955|url=https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78393|access-date=April 21, 2021|website=The Museum of Modern Art|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=Cotter|first=Holland|date=February 2, 2007|title=Bull's-Eyes and Body Parts: It's Theater, From Jasper Johns|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/arts/design/02john.html|access-date=April 21, 2021|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> Johns's early and enduring use of the medium of encaustic also presented the opportunity to experiment with texture. An ancient technique, encaustic is a process whereby melted wax mixed with pigment is applied and "burned into" a support. The method allowed Johns to preserve the discrete quality of individual brushstrokes, even when layered, creating textured yet, at times, transparent surfaces.<ref>{{cite web|last=Macpherson|first=Amy|date=November 29, 2017|title=Video: what is encaustic painting?|url=https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/jasper-johns-what-is-encaustic-painting|access-date=April 21, 2021|website=Royal Academy of Arts}}</ref><ref name=":4" /> Johns's 2020 work ''[[Slice (painting)|Slice]]'' reproduces a drawing of a knee by Jéan-Marc Togodgue, a Cameroonian emigre student basketball player who attended the [[Salisbury School]] near Johns's estate in Sharon.<ref name="Edgers">{{Cite news|last=Edgers|first=Geoff|title=How did this teenager's drawing wind up in a Jasper Johns painting at the Whitney?|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/interactive/2021/jasper-johns-slice-painting-whitney/|access-date=September 30, 2021|newspaper=Washington Post|language=en}}</ref> Johns's use of Togodgue's artwork without first notifying him led to a dispute that was settled amicably.<ref name="Slice2">{{cite news |last1=Solomon |first1=Deborah |title=All the World in a 'Slice' of Art |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/13/arts/design/slice-jasper-johns.html |access-date=September 30, 2021 |work=The New York Times |date=September 13, 2021}}</ref><ref name="Edgers"/><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://news.artnet.com/art-world/jasper-johns-used-teenagers-knee-drawing-2016175|title = The Complicated Story Behind Jasper Johns's Dispute with a Cameroonian Teen over a Drawing of a Knee (It Has a Happy Ending)|date = October 2021}}</ref>

===Sculpture===
Johns made his first sculpture, ''Flashlight I'', in 1958. Many of his earliest sculptures are single, freestanding objects modeled from a material called Sculp-metal, a pliable metallic medium that could be applied and manipulated much like paint or clay.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Genocchio |first=Benjamin |date=December 5, 2008 |title=In Jasper Johns's Hands, a Simple Object Glows |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/nyregion/new-jersey/07artsnj.html |access-date=September 29, 2023 |website=New York Times}}</ref> During this period, he also employed casting techniques to make objects out of plaster and bronze. Some of these objects are painted to suggest a certain sense of verisimilitude; ''[https://www.moma.org/collection/works/189521 Painted Bronze]'' (1960), for example, depicts a can painted with the Savarin Coffee label. Filled with cast paintbrushes, the work recalls an object one might find on an artist's studio table.

''Numbers'' (2007), which depicts his now classic pattern of stenciled numerals repeated in a grid, and is the largest single bronze Johns has made to date.<ref name="matthewmarks.com">{{cite web |date=2012 |title=Jasper Johns: Numbers, 0–9, and 5 Postcards |url=http://www.matthewmarks.com/los-angeles/exhibitions/2012-11-02_jasper-johns/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121106235543/http://www.matthewmarks.com/los-angeles/exhibitions/2012-11-02_jasper-johns/ |archive-date=November 6, 2012 |website=[[Matthew Marks Gallery]]}}</ref> Another sculpture from this period, 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 (painter)|Émile Bernard]]. On one side of the relief, Johns pressed each letter of van Gogh's words into the wax model. On the other side, he spelled each letter in the [[American Sign Language]] alphabet using stamps he designed. Johns signed the wax model with impressions of his own hand, his name finger-spelled in two vertical rows.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.matthewmarks.com/new-york/exhibitions/2011-05-07_jasper-johns/ |title=Jasper Johns: New Sculpture and Works on Paper |date=2011 |website=[[Matthew Marks Gallery]] |access-date=May 2, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120618011328/http://www.matthewmarks.com/new-york/exhibitions/2011-05-07_jasper-johns/ |archive-date=June 18, 2012}}</ref>

===Prints===
Johns began experimenting with printmaking techniques in 1960, when [[Tatyana Grosman]], the founder of Universal Limited Art Editions, Inc. (ULAE), invited him to her printmaking studio on Long Island. Beginning with lithographs that explore the common objects and motifs for which he is best known, such as ''[https://www.moma.org/collection/works/65227 Target]'' (1960), Johns continued to work closely with ULAE, publishing over 180 editions in a variety of printmaking techniques to investigate and develop existing compositions.<ref>{{cite web |date= |title=Jasper Johns |url=https://www.ulae.com/artists/jasper-johns/bio/ |archive-date= |access-date=September 29, 2023 |website=Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE)}}</ref> 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 utilize the handfed offset lithographic press, resulting in ''Decoy'' — an image realized as a lithograph before it became a drawing or painting.

Johns has worked with other printmakers throughout his career, producing lithographs and lead reliefs at [[Gemini G.E.L.]] in Los Angeles;<ref>{{Cite web |title=Jasper Johns |url=https://www.geminigel.com/artists/jasper-johns/ |access-date=September 29, 2023 |website=Gemini GEL}}</ref> screenprints with Hiroshi Kawanishi at Simca Prints in New York from 1973–75;<ref>{{Cite web |title=Jasper Johns Usuyuki |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/336773 |access-date=September 29, 2023 |website=Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |date=1981}}</ref> and intaglios published by Petersburg Press at [[Aldo Crommelynck|Atelier Crommelynck]] in Paris from 1975–90, including a collaboration with the author [[Samuel Beckett]] that resulted in ''Foirades/Fizzles'' (1976), a book of five text fragments by Beckett in French and English and 33 intaglios by Johns.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Foirades/Fizzles |url=https://www.moma.org/collection/works/illustratedbooks/17358?locale=en |access-date=September 29, 2023 |website=Museum of Modern Art, New York}}</ref> He produced ''Cup 2 Picasso'' as an offset lithograph for the June 1973 issue of the magazine ''XXe siècle'' and, in 2000, completed an edition of 26 linocuts printed by the Grenfell Press and published by Z Press to accompany Jeff Clark's ''Sun on 6''.<ref>{{cite web |author=<!--Not stated--> |date=n.d. |title=Cup 2 Picasso, 1973 |url=https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.132825.html |access-date=October 14, 2021 |publisher=[[National Gallery of Art]] |quote=Accession Number 2008.27.7}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |date=May 12, 2012 |title=Sun on Six by Jasper Johns on artnet Auctions |url=http://www.artnet.com/auctions/artists/jasper-johns/sun-on-six |access-date=December 5, 2013 |publisher=Artnet.com}}</ref> For the May 2014 issue of ''[[Art in America]]'', he created an unnumbered black-and-white off-set lithograph depicting many of his signature motifs.<ref>Carol Vogel (April 17, 2014), [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/18/arts/design/moma-plans-a-robert-gober-retrospective.html Art as Magazine Insert] ''[[New York Times]]''.</ref>

In 1995, Johns hired master printmaker John Lund and began to construct his own printmaking studio on his property in Sharon, Connecticut. Low Road Studio was officially founded in 1997 as Johns's own publishing imprint.<ref name="JJ Dossier" />

===Collaborations===
For decades Johns worked with others to raise both funds and attention for [[Merce Cunningham]]'s Dance Company. He assisted [[Robert Rauschenberg]] in some of his 1950s designs for Cunningham's sets and costumes. In spring 1963, Johns and [[John Cage]] cofounded the [[Foundation for Contemporary Arts|Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts]] (now the Foundation for Contemporary Arts), to raise funds in the performance field.<ref name="ffca">{{cite web|url=https://www.foundationforcontemporaryarts.org/about/history/|title=Founders|publisher=foundationforcontemporaryarts.org|accessdate=October 20, 2021}}</ref> Johns continued his support of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and served as an artistic adviser from 1967 to 1980. In 1968 Cunningham made a [[Duchamp]]-inspired theater piece, ''Walkaround Time'', for which Johns's set design replicates elements of Duchamp's work ''[[The Large Glass]]'' (1915–23).<ref>Alistair Macaulay (January 7, 2013), [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/arts/design/jasper-johns-speaks-of-merce-cunningham.html Cunningham and Johns: Rare Glimpses Into a Collaboration] ''New York Times''.</ref> Earlier, Johns also wrote [[neodada|Neo-dada]] lyrics for [[The Druds]], a short-lived [[avant-garde]] [[noise music]] art band that featured prominent members of the New York proto-[[conceptual art]] and [[minimal art]] community.<ref>[http://galleristny.com/2012/01/patty-mucha-oldenburg-on-her-archives-01162012/] Patty Mucha on The Druds</ref><ref>[[Blake Gopnik]], ''Warhol: A Life as Art'' London: Allen Lane. March 5, 2020. {{ISBN|978-0-241-00338-1}} p. 297</ref> The [[National Gallery of Art]], Washington, DC, owns [[Chuck Close]]'s large-scale portrait of Johns.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.108749.html|title=Jasper, 1997-98|publisher=nga.gov.uk|accessdate=October 23, 2021}}</ref> In the late 1960s Johns' work was published in [[0 to 9 Magazine|0 to 9 magazine]], an avant-garde journal which experimented with language and meaning-making

===Commissions===
In 1963, the architect [[Philip Johnson]] commissioned Johns to make a work for what is now the David H. Koch Theater at [[Lincoln Center]].<ref name=":4" /> ''Numbers'' (1964), a 9-by-7-foot grid of numerals, debuted in 1964 and, after presiding over the theater's lobby for 35 years, was supposed to be sold by the center for a reported $15 million in 1979. ''Numbers'' is historically important because it is the largest work of the artist's Numbers motif, and each of its Sculp-metal and collage units is on a separate canvas.<ref name=":4" /> Responding to widespread criticism, the board of Lincoln Center decided to drop its plans to sell the work, which was Johns's first and only public commission.<ref>Carol Vogel (January 26, 1999), [https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/26/nyregion/lincoln-center-drops-plan-to-sell-its-jasper-johns-painting.html Lincoln Center Drops Plan to Sell Its Jasper Johns Painting] ''New York Times''.</ref>

=== Style ===
Johns's work is sometimes grouped with [[Neo-Dada]] and [[pop art]]: he uses symbols in the [[Dada]] tradition of the [[Found object|readymades]] of [[Marcel Duchamp]], but unlike many pop artists such as [[Andy Warhol]], he does not engage with celebrity culture.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Tate|title=Neo-dada – Art Term|url=https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/n/neo-dada|access-date=April 21, 2021|website=Tate [Museum]|language=en-GB}}</ref><ref name=":1" /> Other scholars and museums position Johns and Rauschenberg as predecessors of pop art.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Neo-Dada|url=https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/movement/neo-dada|access-date=April 21, 2021|website=The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation|language=en-US|quote=The term Neo-Dada, first popularized in a group of articles by Barbara Rose in the early 1960s, has been applied to a wide variety of artistic works, including the pre-Pop Combines and assemblages of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns ...}}</ref><ref name=":1" />