Jasper Johns is an American painter in the abstract expressionist/pop school. Born in Augusta, Georgia on May 15, 1930, and raised in the American South, he moved to New York City in 1952, and still resides there.
He is known for his paintings, drawings and prints from the 1950's and 1960's of iconic images such as flags, targets, and numbers. His works represented a radical departure from the abstract expressionist style which was popular during that time period in New York City, since their tone was unemotional, and impersonal.
Four specific motifs in his early works are the target, a mechanical "wedge" device which scrapes the surface of the painting, the superimposed printing of color names on the work and the imprint of the body on the surface of the artwork.
Later paintings represented abstract subjects and tromp d'oeil illusionism as well as recognizable objects. He also experimented with sculpture using everyday objects such as beer cans and flashlights.
He attended the University of South Carolina and an art school in New York, but he is considered a "self-taught" artist. His first show was at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in 1958, when he was 29 years old.
He is widely considered to have been one of the forerunners of the American pop art movement, with Robert Rauschenberg and others.
ArtNews magazine recently named Johns one of the "ten most expensive living artists," in terms of the prices his paintings currently command.
Web Sites
Life and Works:
- Grove Dictionary of Art Online
- Getty Museum (Artist Union List)
- National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
- Brain-Juice.com
Images:
- National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
(Current Exhibition January 28- April 29, 2007) - ImageBase (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco)
- Artcyclopedia.com
Catalog
Search the library's catalog for Jasper Johns.
Databases
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