Editing Jasper Johns (section)

===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>