#Jasper johns alphabet series
Following this, he began a new series that was much more muted, mysterious, and serene than his earlier work. In 1997, a major retrospective of 225 of Johns' work was held in New York at the Museum of Modern Art, organized by Kirk Varnedoe. He created assemblage, and from 1972, used a cross-hatching method. In 1959, his work became increasingly abstract, influenced by Surrealism and Dadaism, with surfaces complicated by combining bold colors with letters and other symbols, some of them obvious such as maps and others hard to read. In 1956 to 1957, he added numbers to his paintings in 1958, he did his first sculpture of mundane objects and in 1960, he executed his first lithographs. Over the next few years, Johns used the same approach with other images that were traditional symbols. For Johns, major influences on this Minimalist style were his friendships with dancer Merce Cunningham, composer John Cage, and artist Robert Rauschenberg. His flag paintings are credited as key in the development of Minimal Art in that the focus of these pieces was their linearity and uniformity with de-emphasis on the unique creative talents of the artist. It was revolutionary in that it was simply a geometric design on a large canvas, divorced from emotional or political connotation. Returning to New York, he began experimenting with styles, and "Flag", dated 1955, earned him his first major attention. In 1949 he moved to New York City but was drafted into the Army. They are modernist in that they lack traditional perspective, focusing on inter-relationships of color and shapes, but are realist in that they have recognizable subject matter.īorn in Augusta, Georgia, Johns grew up in South Carolina, with no formal art training but did attend the University of South Carolina for two years. Unlike Abstract Expressionism, these signature works seem removed from the artist's emotions. Johns completed his first flag painting in 1955, alphabet subjects in 1956, sculpture in 1958, and lithographs in 1960. His name is most associated with pictorial images of flags and numbers, Pop-Art subjects that he depicted in Minimalist style with emphasis on linearity, repetition, and symmetry. Painter, sculptor, and printmaker Jasper Johns became one of America's best-known post-Abstract Expressionists and Minimalists.
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