Credited as a founding father of Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptual art, Jasper Johns was one of the first painters to use everyday objects and commonplace images in his art, thus paving the way for artists like Warhol and Oldenburg. Beginning in...
[more]Credited as a founding father of Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptual art, Jasper Johns was one of the first painters to use everyday objects and commonplace images in his art, thus paving the way for artists like Warhol and Oldenburg.
Beginning in the mid-'50s, Johns painted canvases that depict, or simply reproduce, bull's-eye targets, American flags, numerals, and letters. Interested in the complex process of seeing simple symbols, he modified these easily recognized and oft-overlooked objects to make viewers examine them and reconsider their meaning. In some cases the modification is subtle -- red, white, and blue encaustic paint is laid over the stars and stripes, lending a hand-made feel to the mass-produced image. In other cases, Johns alters the usual colors (using green, black, and yellow in place of red, white, and blue, for instance), repeats or multiplies an image within the same canvas, and sometimes juxtaposes distinctly clashing artifacts like plaster casts of body parts, further personalizing these everyday "things the mind already knows." The status of the resulting art works is ambiguous: are the targets actual targets, reproductions of targets, or art objects? The use of the commonplace raises related questions about how we respond to art. Can we invest emotion in a mass-produced symbol? On the other hand, can we deny that such symbols are already and irreversibly embedded in our psyches, and thus personalized, invested with private meaning? And what determines this meaning -- the public use of the symbol or its place in our private mental world?
As Johns' work evolved during the '60s and into the present, it became more Expressionist and collagelike, incorporating panels of color, abstract shapes and letter forms, and found objects. These later works reflect the influence of Johns' contemporary Robert Rauschenberg.
Because his signature symbol paintings stress the idea behind the work rather than his manipulation of materials, Johns is often identified as Neo-Dada and linked to the work of Duchamp. "Concept," however, is clearly the operative word in Johns' art. His art concretizes debates about art and provokes conceptual quandaries in those who view it.
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