Johns, Jasper (redirected from Jasper Johns)

Johns, Jasper, 1930–, American artist, b. Augusta, Ga. Influenced by Marcel Duchamp in the mid-1950s, Johns attempted to transform common objects into art by placing them in an art context. Along with his close friends Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham, Johns eschewed the idea of the artist-hero and embraced the experimental, the accidental, and the everyday—aesthetic approaches that became extremely influential in contemporary arts. His flags and target images executed from 1954 to 1959 heralded the pop art movement. Other recurring motifs, which continued into the 1960s, include his beautifully delineated numerals, letters, and maps of the United States. Acclaimed for his painterly touch, Johns based his technique on the informal brushwork and texture of abstract expressionism, sometimes attaching literal elements such as rulers and brooms to the canvas. His bronze castings, such as Beer Cans (1960), are also derived from common objects. His critically acclaimed abstract crosshatch paintings of the 1970s were followed by the allusion-filled, self-referential works of the 1980s and 90s, e.g., the four Seasons (1985–86), which use recurrent motifs as symbols to pull the viewer into engagement with the works. Many of his spare paintings of the early 2000s incorporate real or painted catenaries (curves created by cords hanging from two points), others echo the flagstonelike motifs he used several decades earlier. Throughout his career, Johns has also created drawings and a variety of prints.

Bibliography

See K. Varnedoe, ed., Jasper Johns: Writings, Sketchbook, Notes, Interviews (1996); studies by R. Bernstein (1985), M. Rosenthal (1988), G. Boudaille (1989), F. Orton (1994), J. Yau (1996), and J. Weiss (2007).

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Johns, Jasper

(born May 15, 1930, Augusta, Ga., U.S.) U.S. painter, sculptor, and printmaker. He began his career as a commercial artist, producing displays for New York City shop windows. In 1958 he had his first one-man exhibition, a rousing success. The paintings Johns went on to produce depict commonplace, two-dimensional subjects such as flags, targets, maps, numbers, and letters of the alphabet. He was able to raise these objects to the level of icons through his paint handling and manipulation of surface texture, which he obtained through the encaustic technique. In their willful and ironic banality and their rejection of emotional expression, these early works were a radical departure from the then-dominant Abstract Expressionist style. Johns's unabashed depiction of commonplace emblems and objects was emulated by many Pop art artists. From 1961 he began to attach real objects to his canvases. In the 1970s he produced paintings composed of clusters of parallel lines that he called “crosshatchings”; in the 1980s he experimented with figuration.

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Johns, Jasper (1930–  ) painter; born in Allendale, S.C. After studying at the University of South Carolina, he settled in New York City (1952). By 1955 he had transformed the direction of abstract expressionism by using everyday objects and reinterpreting them. His series of paintings of flags and his mixed media images of targets represented a return to the object as art. He worked in encaustic, a mixture of pigment and beeswax, which, when applied with heat, creates a strong, glossy surface. Known as an intellectual artist and a precursor of pop art, he continued to produce original works and gain in reputation long after the pop art movement faded.