What you saw was what you got: an American flag, with its blue rectangle filled with 48 stars (Alaska and Hawaii had not yet achieved statehood) and its alternating red and white stripes. Unlike Abstract Expressionist paintings, which often alluded to lofty philosophical concepts, spiritual states of being, or natural subjects, Flag referred to nothing other than itself. Flag (1954–55) unsettled critics because it looked nothing like those works. Going gallery to gallery, one might see numerous exhibitions featuring all-over abstractions, each with a particular style that corresponded to a certain artist (drips of paint for Jackson Pollock, heavy black forms for Franz Kline, fields of saturated color for Mark Rothko, and so on). Image Credit: ©Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Museum of Modern Artĭuring the ’50s, Abstract Expressionism was still considered the paragon of art in New York. How do you decode a Johns painting? Below, a look at seven works and the layers of meaning hidden within them. Next week, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum in New York will open a two-part, 500-work retrospective spanning the full of the 91-year-old artist’s oeuvre. As former Museum of Modern Art director Kirk Varnedoe once wrote, “The common image of this artist is that of a delphic, cerebral strategist who understands at all times exactly what he is doing and what his works mean (but usually chooses to keep it secret).” Rife with allusions to his personal life and art history, they have intrigued scholars because they appear so unforthcoming. In the years afterward, Johns would continue to make paintings and prints that are likewise hard to parse. They helped formalize a turn away from Abstract Expressionism and set the stage for the beginnings of Pop-and made Johns a bona fide star in the process.ĭespite their fame, these works resisted easy interpretation and introduced the whatsit quality that has come to define Johns’s art. Termed Neo-Dada by critics during the ’50s because of the art’s basis in the conceptually slippery sculptures of Marcel Duchamp, these works marked a seismic shift in the New York art world of their day. In the following decade, Johns went on to create the works that now define his oeuvre: his encaustic paintings of flags, targets, numbers, and maps. “There was a change in my spirit, in my thought and my work, as well as some doubt and terror,” Johns once recalled. He met artist Robert Rauschenberg, with whom he led a romantic relationship, and he was brought into the orbit of experimental composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham, both of whom enhanced Johns’s understanding of the role that everyday life could play in art. In November 2014, the encaustic Flag (1983) was auctioned off for $36 million at Sotheby's in New York City.Until 1954, Jasper Johns routinely destroyed his artworks, feeling them somehow inadequate. Cohen for an estimated $110 million, making it the most expensive work sold by a living artist as of 2023. His 48-star Flag from 1958 was purchased in 2010 by hedge fund manager Steven A. Johns made over 40 works based on the US flag, including the large and monochrome White Flag in 1955, and his 1958 work Three Flags with three superimposed flags showing a total of 84 stars. The painting has a rough-textured surface, and the 48 stars are not identical. Reading the texts, it is clear that the newsprint was not selected at random: Johns steered clear of headlines, or national or political news, and used inconsequential articles or adverts. The painting reflects the three colors of the US flag: red, white and blue the flag is depicted in the form it took between 19, with 48 white stars on a blue canton representing the then-US states (excluding Alaska and Hawaii), and with thirteen red and white stripes. It is made using encaustic, oil paint, and newsprint collage on three separate canvases, mounted on a plywood board. It is held in the Museum of Modern Art, in New York. It is arguably the painting for which Johns is best known. This painting was the first of many works that Johns made, as he said, that were inspired by a dream of the U.S. It was created in 1954-1955, when Johns was 24, two years after he was discharged from the US Army. This rough method of construction is rarely visible in photographic reproductions of his work.įlag is an encaustic painting by the American artist Jasper Johns. This image illustrates Johns's early technique of painting with thick, dripping encaustic over a collage made from found materials such as newspaper. Encaustic, oil and collage on fabric mounted on plywoodĭetail of Flag (1954–55).
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