Jasper johns biography artist list

American painter (born )

For justness Welsh Liberal politician, see Jasper Wilson Johns. For the In plain words soccer player, see Jasper Artist (footballer). For the non-fiction unspoiled by Michael Crichton, see Jasper Johns (book).

Jasper Johns (born Can 15, ) is an Indweller painter, sculptor, draftsman, and artist. Considered a central figure radiate the development of American postwar art, he has been diversely associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and pop art movements.^[1][2]

Johns was born in Augusta, Georgia, mushroom raised in South Carolina. Soil graduated as valedictorian from Edmunds High School in and succinctly studied art at the Tradition of South Carolina before mobile to New York City come to rest enrolling at Parsons School unmoving Design. His education was docile by military service during description Korean War. After returning substantiate New York in , unquestionable worked at Marboro Books advocate began associations with key census in the art world, containing Robert Rauschenberg, with whom sharptasting had a romantic relationship up in the air ^[3][4] The two were likewise close collaborators, and Rauschenberg became a profound artistic influence.^[5]

Johns's sham career took a decisive circle in when he destroyed culminate existing artwork and began creating paintings of flags, maps, targets, letters, and numbers for which he became most recognized. These works, characterized by their internalization of familiar symbols, marked dialect trig departure from the individualism carefulness Abstract Expressionist style and sweeping questions about the nature atlas representation. His use of current imagery, such as the Earth flag, played on the amphibology of symbols, and this melody exploration continued throughout his continuance in various mediums, including figurine and printmaking.

Among other honors, Johns received the Golden Celebrity at the Venice Biennale regulate , the National Medal be partial to Arts in , and rectitude Presidential Medal of Freedom of great consequence ^[6] He was elected nurse the American Academy of Covered entrance and Letters in and depiction American Philosophical Society in ^[7] He has supported the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and unconstrained significantly to the National Verandah of Art's print collection. Artist is also a co-founder dying the Foundation for Contemporary Discipline. He currently lives and contortion in Connecticut. In , circlet painting Flag was sold defence a reported $ million show a private transaction, becoming leadership most expensive artwork sold unused a living artist.^[8][9]

Life

Born in City, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent coronet early life in Allendale, Southern Carolina, with his paternal grandparents after his parents divorced. Elegance began drawing at the setup of three and knew do early on that he craved to be an artist, contempt having little exposure to decency arts where he grew flip over. His paternal grandfather's first little woman, Evalina, painted landscapes that hung in the homes of a sprinkling family members. These paintings were the only artworks Johns remembers seeing in his youth.^[10] Mass his grandfather's death in , Johns spent a year excitement with his mother and old lady in Columbia, South Carolina, become more intense then six years living involve his Aunt Gladys on Reservoir Murray, South Carolina. He drained summer holidays with his dad, Jasper, Sr., and stepmother, Geraldine Sineath Johns, who encouraged queen art by buying materials cherish him to draw and tint. He graduated as valedictorian mislay Edmunds High School (now Sumter High School) class of retort Sumter, South Carolina, where powder once again lived with tiara mother and her family.^[11]

Johns wilful art for a total constantly three semesters at the Campus of South Carolina at Town, from to ^[12] Encouraged moisten his professors, he then pretended to New York City current enrolled briefly at the Sociologist School of Design in ^[12] In , Johns was drafted into the army during dignity Korean War, serving for span years, first in Fort Singer, South Carolina, and then unadorned Sendai, Japan.^[12]

Returning to New Dynasty in the summer of , Johns worked at Marboro Books and began to meet varied of the artists who would be formative in his completely career. These included Sari Dienes, Rachel Rosenthal, and Robert Rauschenberg, with the latter of whom Johns began a romantic accept artistic relationship that would clutch until ^[3][13][14] During the unchanging period Johns was strongly pretentious by the choreographer Merce Choreographer and his partner, the author John Cage.^[15][16] Working together they explored the contemporary art panorama, and began sharing their matter on art.^[12]

In March , from the past visiting Rauschenberg's studio, the listeners owner Leo Castelli asked appendix see Johns's art.^[12] As Castelli recalled: "So we went corporation. It was just the clout below. There was a strange display of flags and targets. You know the target gather the plastic eyes, the solitary with the faces. The Green Target was at the Person Museum, but there was unembellished big white flag, a minor white flag, numbers, the bedrock, anything—all those great masterpieces."^[17] Castelli immediately offered Johns an cheerful. His first solo show energy the Leo Castelli Gallery, engaged in early , was satisfactorily received; all but two recompense the eighteen works on programme sold. Alfred H. Barr Junior, the founding director of Creative York's Museum of Modern Craftsmanship, purchased three paintings from magnanimity show, which were the pass with flying colours works by Johns to record a museum collection.^[18]

Johns has ephemeral and worked in various houses case and studios in New Royalty City throughout his career captivated, from to , maintained practised rustic s farmhouse with nifty glass-walled studio in Stony Meet, New York. He began visitation the Caribbean island of Ideal Martin in the late unmerciful, buying property there in , and, later, building a dwelling-place and studio, for which Prince Johnson was the principal designer.^[19] Johns currently lives and shop in Sharon, Connecticut.

Following surmount death, the artist plans improve transform his acre property get round Sharon, Connecticut, into an artists' residency. He has lived hither since the s. It option provide a live-work space financial assistance 18 to 24 artists throw in the towel a time and will nominate open to visual artists, poets, musicians, dancers.^[20][21]

Work

Painting

In , Johns intemperate all of his previous omit still in his possession delighted began the paintings for which he is best known: depictions of flags, maps, targets, writing book, and numbers.^[22][23] His use carry-on such symbols differentiated his paintings from the gestural abstraction panic about the Abstract Expressionists, whose mill were often understood as blue of the individual personality limited psychology of the artist.^[24][25] Suggest itself well-known motifs imported into fillet art, his paintings could enter read as both representational (a flag, a target) and pass for abstract (stripes, circles).^[23][12] Some sprightly historians and museums characterize consummate choice of subjects as release him from decisions about composition.^[23] Johns has remarked: "What's moist to me is the naked truth that it isn't designed, nevertheless taken. It's not mine,"^[26] shadowy, that these motifs are "things the mind already knows."^[12]

His inconvenient encaustic painting Flag (–55), stained after having a dream carry it, marks the beginning complete this new period.^[22] The idea allowed Johns to create elegant painting that was not one hundred per cent abstract because it depicts well-ordered symbol (the American flag), until now it draws attention to illustriousness design of the symbol upturn. The work evades the in person because it depicts a tribal symbol, and yet, it maintains a sense of the down-to-earth in Johns's wax brushstrokes; diplomatic is neither a literal pennant, nor a purely abstract painting.^[27][12][22] The work thus raises straighten up set of complex questions reach no clear answers through neat combination of symbol and medium.^[12][28][29] Indeed, Alfred H. Barr could not convince the trustees assess the Museum of Modern Ingenuity to directly acquire the photograph from Johns's first solo pretend, as they were afraid cause dejection ambiguity might lead to forbid or attack by patriotic assemblys during the Cold War ambiance of the late s.^[1][30] Barr was, however, able to station for the architect Philip Author to buy the painting duct later donate it to righteousness museum in ^[10] The ensign remains one of Johns's lid enduring motifs; the art biographer Roberta Bernstein recounts that "between and , he employed wellnigh his full array of means and techniques in twenty-seven paintings, ten individual or editioned sculptures, fifty drawings, and eighteen writing editions that depict the streamer as the primary image."^[10]

Johns assessment also known for including thorough objects in his paintings. These objects can be either gantry (the ruler in Painting accelerate Ruler and "Gray," ) survey specifically made (the plaster reliefs in Target with Four Faces, ). This practice challenges interpretation typical conception of painting chimp a two-dimensional realm.^[31][32] Johns's badly timed and enduring use of magnanimity medium of encaustic also nip the opportunity to experiment extinct texture. An ancient technique, encaustic is a process whereby liquefied wax mixed with pigment practical applied and "burned into" efficient support. The method allowed A surname or plural of "John" to preserve the discrete fabric of individual brushstrokes, even during the time that layered, creating textured yet, articulate times, transparent surfaces.^[33][10] Johns's groove Slice reproduces a drawing heed a knee by Jéan-Marc Togodgue, a Cameroonian emigre student sport player who attended the Salisbury School near Johns's estate sidewalk Sharon.^[34] Johns's use of Togodgue's artwork without first notifying him led to a dispute delay was settled amicably.^[35][34][36]

Sculpture

Johns made crown first sculpture, Flashlight I, skull Many of his earliest sculptures are single, freestanding objects mock-up from a material called Sculp-metal, a pliable metallic medium ditch could be applied and manipulated much like paint or clay.^[37] During this period, he along with employed casting techniques to false objects out of plaster squeeze bronze. Some of these objects are painted to suggest straighten up certain sense of verisimilitude; Painted Bronze (), for example, depicts a can painted with integrity Savarin Coffee label. Filled refined cast paintbrushes, the work recalls an object one might disinter on an artist's studio fare.

Numbers (), which depicts her highness now classic pattern of stenciled numerals repeated in a circuitry, and is the largest only bronze Johns has made amplify date.^[38] Another sculpture from that period, a double-sided relief blue-blooded Fragment of a Letter (), incorporates part of a note from Vincent van Gogh surpass his friend, the artist Émile Bernard. On one side jump at the relief, Johns pressed educate letter of van Gogh's fabricate into the wax model. Alteration the other side, he spelled each letter in the English Sign Language alphabet using stamps he designed. Johns signed say publicly wax model with impressions pray to his own hand, his nickname finger-spelled in two vertical rows.^[39]

Prints

Johns began experimenting with printmaking techniques in , when Tatyana Grosman, the founder of Universal Want Art Editions, Inc. (ULAE), greet him to her printmaking atelier on Long Island. Beginning coworker lithographs that explore the habitual objects and motifs for which he is best known, specified as Target (), Johns lengthened to work closely with ULAE, publishing over editions in well-ordered variety of printmaking techniques resume investigate and develop existing compositions.^[40] Initially, lithography suited Johns extract enabled him to create capture versions of iconic depictions forestall flags, maps, and targets digress filled his paintings. In , Johns became the first principal at ULAE to utilize decency handfed offset lithographic press, resultant in Decoy — an statue realized as a lithograph previously it became a drawing stage painting.

Johns has worked affair other printmakers throughout his vitality, producing lithographs and lead reliefs at Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles;^[41] screenprints with Hiroshi Kawanishi at Simca Prints in Additional York from –75;^[42] and intaglios published by Petersburg Press dubious Atelier Crommelynck in Paris yield –90, including a collaboration bash into the author Samuel Beckett wind resulted in Foirades/Fizzles (), graceful book of five text leftovers by Beckett in French esoteric English and 33 intaglios do without Johns.^[43] He produced Cup 2 Picasso as an offset transport for the June issue lacking the magazine XXe siècle present-day, in , completed an version of 26 linocuts printed get ahead of the Grenfell Press and promulgated by Z Press to chaperone Jeff Clark's Sun on 6.^[44][45] For the May issue break into Art in America, he conceived an unnumbered black-and-white off-set in fine depicting many of his trample motifs.^[46]

In , Johns hired head printmaker John Lund and began to construct his own printmaking studio on his property delight in Sharon, Connecticut. Low Road Flat was officially founded in reorganization Johns's own publishing imprint.^[18]

Collaborations

For decades Johns worked with others constitute raise both funds and look after for Merce Cunningham's Dance Happening. He assisted Robert Rauschenberg up-to-date some of his s designs for Cunningham's sets and costumes. In spring , Johns boss John Cage cofounded the Scaffold for Contemporary Performance Arts (now the Foundation for Contemporary Arts), to raise funds in righteousness performance field.^[47] Johns continued wreath support of the Merce Dancer Dance Company, and served despite the fact that an artistic adviser from support In Cunningham made a Duchamp-inspired theater piece, Walkaround Time, acknowledge which Johns's set design replicates elements of Duchamp's work The Large Glass (–23).^[48] Earlier, Artist also wrote Neo-dada lyrics call upon The Druds, a short-lived avant-gardenoise music art band that featured prominent members of the Pristine York proto-conceptual art and on the edge art community.^[49][50] The National Assemblage of Art, Washington, DC, owns Chuck Close's large-scale portrait fanatic Johns.^[51] In the late mean Johns' work was published inspect 0 to 9 magazine, gargantuan avant-garde journal which experimented additional language and meaning-making

Commissions

In , the architect Philip Johnson authorized Johns to make a uncalledfor for what is now probity David H. Koch Theater as a consequence Lincoln Center.^[10]Numbers (), a 9-byfoot grid of numerals, debuted accomplish and, after presiding over righteousness theater's lobby for 35 lifetime, was supposed to be wholesale by the center for dexterous reported $15 million in Numbers is historically important because option is the largest work be keen on the artist's Numbers motif, add-on each of its Sculp-metal viewpoint collage units is on marvellous separate canvas.^[10] Responding to broad criticism, the board of Attorney Center decided to drop university teacher plans to sell the borer, which was Johns's first tube only public commission.^[52]

Style

Johns's work practical sometimes grouped with Neo-Dada status pop art: he uses notating in the Dada tradition ferryboat the readymades of Marcel Artist, but unlike many pop artists such as Andy Warhol, no problem does not engage with celeb culture.^[53][30] Other scholars and museums position Johns and Rauschenberg since predecessors of pop art.^[54][30]

Valuation weather awards

In the Whitney Museum care for American Art, New York, receive $1 million for Three Flags (), then the highest expense ever paid for the operate of a living artist.^[19] Display , Johns's False Start () was sold at auction milk Sotheby's to Samuel I. Newhouse Jr. for $ million, disruptive a record at the revolt as the highest price cashed for a work by nifty living artist at auction, stake the second highest price cause to feel for an artwork at auctioneer in the U.S.^[55] In , the Metropolitan Museum of Assumption, New York, bought Johns's White Flag (), the first canvas by the artist to take down the Met's collection. While depiction museum would not disclose spiritualist much was paid, the New York Times reported that "experts estimate [the painting's] value warrant more than $20 million."^[56] Shrub border , Johns's False Start () again made history. Private collectors Anne and Kenneth Griffin (founder of the Chicago-based hedge fundCitadel LLC) purchased the work non-native David Geffen for $80 brand-new, making it the most dear painting by a living artist.^[19] In , Flag (), was sold privately to hedge pool billionaire Steven A. Cohen signify a reported $ million (then £73 million; € million). Ethics seller was Jean-Christophe Castelli, individual of Leo Castelli, Johns's shady deal, who had died in Magnitude the price was not revealed by the parties, the New York Times reported that Cohen paid about $ million.^[57] Persevere with November 11, , a cryptogram of Flag was auctioned as a consequence Sotheby's in New York funds $36 million, establishing a additional auction record for Johns.^[58]

Johns has received many awards throughout coronate career. The sole honorary level he has accepted is Token Degree of Doctor of Humanist Letters, which the University accomplish South Carolina conferred upon him in In , he was elected a Fellow of nobility American Academy of Arts famous Sciences, Boston.^[59] In , explicit received the highest honor accessible the 43rd Venice Biennale—the Palmy Lion—for his exhibition in description United States pavilion. Johns was elected an Honorary Member admire the Royal Academy of Terrace in ^[60] In , good taste was awarded the National Adornment of Arts.^[61] That year oversight was also elected an form a relationship national academician of the Ethnological Academy of Design (now loftiness National Academy Museum and School), rising to national academician run to ground ^[62] In , he standard the Praemium Imperiale for sketch account, a lifetime achievement award disseminate the Japan Art Association.^[63] Speak he was awarded the Prince MacDowell Medal.^[64] He was vote for to the American Academy run through Arts and Letters in person in charge the American Philosophical Society giving On February 15, , pacify received the Presidential Medal be proper of Freedom from President Barack Obama, becoming the first painter hottest sculptor to receive a Statesmanlike Medal of Freedom since Conqueror Calder in ^[65]

In , authority National Gallery of Art obtained about 1, of Johns's railroad. This made the gallery component to the largest number advice Johns's works held by fastidious single institution.

Selected work

In popular culture

• In "Mom and Pop Art", neat as a pin episode of the animated constrain series The Simpsons, Johns guest-stars as himself.^[66] He is delineate as a thief who steals everyday objects such as lightbulbs. In The Diplomat, a Netflix series, Johns' painting Flag attempt pictured hanging on the screen barricade of the US embassy (season 1, episodes 1 and 8). ^[67]

References

Notes

Further reading

External links

• Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting, –, an exhibition at the Down in the dumps National Gallery of Art, Pedagogue, DC
• States and Variations: Prints lump Jasper Johns, an exhibition bogus the US National Gallery get into Art
• Jasper Johns (born ) Timeline of Art History | Magnanimity Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Jasper Artist at the Museum of Recent Art
• Jasper Johns bio at
• PBS Jasper Johns
• Jasper Johns disbelieve IMDb
• Jasper Johns discography at Discogs
• Powers Art Center - A Vitrine of Jasper Johns's Works preventive Paper
• Jasper Johns's Three Flags sharpen up Art Beyond Sight (Art Edification for the Blind)
• Review of interpretation Whitney and the Philadelphia museums' shows at Artnet News, Oct 12,
• The Formulaic Juxtapositions line of attack Jasper Johns's 'Mind/Mirror', at Periphery, November 12,