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Jasper Johns, Jr. (born May 15, 1930 in Augusta, Georgia) is a contemporary U.S. artist.
Early life
Johns grew up in Allendale, South Carolina, and 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."
Johns studied at the University of South Carolina from 1947 to 1948, a total of three semesters. He then moved to New York and studied briefly at Parsons School of Design in 1949. While in New York, Johns met Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham and John Cage. Working together they explored the contemporary art scene, and began developing their ideas on art. In 1952 and 1953 he was stationed in Sendai, Japan during the Korean War.
In 1958, the gallery owner Leo Castelli visited the studio of Robert Rauschenberg and, during this visit, discovered Johns.
Work
He is best known for his painting Flag (1954-55). 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. For example, his flag paintings create new depth and texture to the American Flag.
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 (wax-based paint), 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 is of particular interest when viewed from a position of Peircean semiotics. In contrast to the concept of macho 'artist hero' as ascribed to Abstract Expressionist figures such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, whose paintings are fully indexical (that is, standing effectively as an all-over canvas signature), 'Neo-Dadaists' like Johns and Robert Rauschenberg seem 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, painted indexically in mockery of the hallowed individuality of the Abstract Expressionists. There is also the issue of 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 1998, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York paid over twenty million dollars for Johns' White Flag.
Major works
- White Flag (1955)
- False Start (1959)
- Study for Skin (1962)
- Seasons (1986)
Other work
Jasper Johns guest-starred on an episode of The Simpsons as himself. In the episode, Homer Simpson accidentally becomes an artist, and Johns attends one of his exhibitions. Johns is amusingly portrayed as a petty thief, stealing items of food, lightbulbs and other small items. This was self-referential to Johns's art career, as most of his artwork came from everyday household objects.
External links
- Jasper Johns bio at artchive.com
- Flag at the Museum of Modern Art
- White Flag at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
- False Start Act out a Jasper Johns painting.
1930 births | Pop art | American painters | Living people | Members of The American Academy of Arts and Letters | Contemporary painters | National Medal of Arts recipients | New York artists | People from Augusta, Georgia
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"Jasper Johns"