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Jasper Johns is an American painter, sculptor, draftsman, and printmaker. Considered a central figure in the development of American postwar art, he has been variously associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and pop art movements.
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culture · American painter (born 1930) · painter · sculptor · costume designer · designer · photographer · graphic artist · printmaker · illustrator · visual artist · artist · also Jasper Johns, Johns
Born 15 May 1930 · Q155057
39 published statements · 0 followers
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The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao organized Jasper Johns: Night Driver, a retrospective exhibition that explored more than seventy years of the artist's career and highlighted his influence on contemporary art
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A 1983 version of Flag was auctioned at Sotheby's in New York for $36 million, establishing a new auction record for Johns
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Won Presidential Medal of Freedom presented by Barack Obama (2011).
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Received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, becoming the first painter or sculptor to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom since Alexander Calder in 1977
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Flag (1958), was sold privately to hedge fund billionaire Steven A
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His 1958 painting Flag was sold for a reported $110 million in a private transaction, becoming the most expensive artwork sold by a living artist
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The National Gallery of Art acquired about 1,700 of Johns's prints
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Johns's False Start (1959) again made history
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Completed an edition of 26 linocuts printed by the Grenfell Press and published by Z Press to accompany Jeff Clark's Sun on 6
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, bought Johns's White Flag (1955), the first painting by the artist to enter the Met's collection
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As Johns's own publishing imprint
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Johns hired master printmaker John Lund and began to construct his own printmaking studio on his property in Sharon, Connecticut
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Was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal
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Awarded Praemium Imperiale (1993).
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Received the Praemium Imperiale for painting, a lifetime achievement award from the Japan Art Association
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Was awarded the National Medal of Arts
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The National Medal of Arts in 1990, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011
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Johns's False Start (1959) was sold at auction at Sotheby's to Samuel I
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Received the highest honor at the 43rd Venice Biennale—the Golden Lion—for his exhibition in the United States pavilion
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Was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston
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The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, paid $1 million for Three Flags (1958), then the highest price ever paid for the work of a living artist
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And the American Philosophical Society in 2007
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And, later, building a home and studio, for which Philip Johnson was the principal designer
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Johns became the first artist at ULAE to utilize the handfed offset lithographic press, resulting in Decoy — an image realized as a lithograph before it became a drawing or painting
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“..I don’t see any point in simply stating something that is easily available. But then that may just be my own psychology, a kind of negative position. It seems to me that if you avoid everything you can avoid, then you do what you can't avoid doing, and you do what is helpless, and unavoidable. That seems to me more interesting than any other position at this moment – for me anyway.”
Cunningham made a Duchamp-inspired theater piece, Walkaround Time, for which Johns's set design replicates elements of Duchamp's work The Large Glass (1915–23)
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Johns had an affair with writer Susan Sontag
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And, after presiding over the theater's lobby for 35 years, was supposed to be sold by the center for a reported $15 million in 1979
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The architect Philip Johnson commissioned Johns to make a work for what is now the David H
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When Tatyana Grosman, the founder of Universal Limited Art Editions, Inc
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Johns lived among many other gay artists including Rauschenberg, Robert Indiana and Ellsworth Kelly in a studio complex created in former shipping lofts on Lower Manhattan's waterfront which had been abandoned and taken
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When he destroyed his existing artwork and began creating paintings of flags, maps, targets, letters, and numbers for which he became most recognized
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Johns destroyed all of his previous artwork still in his possession and began the paintings for which he is best known: depictions of flags, maps, targets, letters, and numbers
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Met Rauschenberg, five years his senior, and they had a romantic relationship that lasted until 1961
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Worked at Marboro Books and began associations with key figures in the art world, including Robert Rauschenberg, with whom he had a romantic relationship until 1961
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Johns was drafted into the army during the Korean War, serving for two years, first in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and then in Sendai, Japan
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And briefly studied art at the University of South Carolina before moving to New York City and enrolling at Parsons School of Design
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Johns spent a year living with his mother and stepfather in Columbia, South Carolina, and then six years living with his Aunt Gladys on Lake Murray, South Carolina
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Born 1930-05-15.
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..I don’t see any point in simply stating something that is easily available. But then that may just be my own psychology, a kind of negative position. It seems to me that if you avoid everything you can avoid, then you do what you can't avoid doing, and you do what is helpless, and unavoidable. That seems to me more interesting than any other position at this moment – for me anyway.
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