Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns indisputably belongs among the key figures of American art in the postwar period. When Abstract Expressionism had reached its pinnacle in 1954/55 in New York, the then 24-year- old artist painted the American flag in a way that the image covered the whole canvas and thus hung on the wall like an actual emblem of his home country, and at the same time could be read as an abstract painting with stars and stripes. In just one work, Johns had summed up the positions of European concrete art and Abstract Expressionism, with the painting pointing the way for both geometric hard-edge painting and American Pop Art. Nevertheless, Jasper Johns cannot be reduced to this turning point so central to American art history. We have before us an extremely complex, graceful oeuvre which may well reveal itself best in those works which the artist had reserved for himself. With oil and object paintings as well as drawings from the estate of the artist, this book allows a focused view onto the pictorial workshop and the world of ideas of Jasper Johns.