Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns, Jr. ( born May 15, 1930 in Augusta, Georgia) is a versatile American painter, sculptor, stage and costume designer. He is regarded as a forerunner of Pop Art, without being attributable his pictorial work of this style.

Life and work

Jasper Johns studied from autumn 1947 to December 1948 at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. From January to June 1949, he spent two semesters at the Parsons School of Design in New York and worked at various odd jobs. His military service, he graduated from May 1951 until the end of 1952 in South Carolina and Japan.

In 1952 he returned to New York and enrolled at Hunter College, but he worked as a salesman in a bookstore. As a result, friendships with Robert Rauschenberg, Rachel Rosenthal and the dancer Merce Cunningham began. As Rauschenberg, he belonged to the circle around John Cage, where he implemented his ideas in his art. He assisted Rauschenberg window dressings and gave up his job at the bookstore to finally, to devote himself to painting can. His living he earned as a freelance window dresser.

Starting in 1954, he found the typical motives that we associate today with John, as those targets ', the American flag, the map of the United States, the alphabets and numbers. In 1957, an acquaintance with Leo Castelli, who organized a 1958 first solo exhibition of Jasper Johns began. Alfred Barr purchased at first works for the Museum of Modern Art ( MoMA). Rauschenberg, Johns and Emile de Antonio produced a John Cage " Retrospective " concert at New York's Town Hall. He created last window displays for Tiffany.

In the years from 1958 Jasper Johns exhibited regularly at Leo Castelli, but also gained huge popularity in Europe. Castelli's former wife and partner, Ileana Sonnabend put him successful in the early 60s in Paris. He was on the Venice Biennale and Documenta in Kassel represented by works (1964: documenta 6 documenta III in 1968: Documenta 4 in 1972: Documenta 5 and 1977). In addition to paintings and lithographs plastic works were created (such as " Painted Bronze ", 1960, Museum Ludwig, Cologne), pretending to be everyday objects such as beer cans or light bulbs. Repeats Johns worked with John Cage and Merce Cunningham and his dance company together, designed costumes, stage sets and posters. In 2011 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the USA.

Jasper Johns lives in New York and in Edisto Beach, South Carolina.

Style

Typical Johns works as flag ( in 1954/55, Museum of Modern Art, New York) emerged in a specific technique for Johns. The image carrier is primed with a collage of newspaper clippings, a popular motif is selected and applied in a combination of oil painting and encaustic ( a going back to the ancient style of painting in which the pigment is bound with liquid wax ) on the image carrier. By deliquescing, but fast drying wax produced a distinct surface qualities. The collage remains visible through the paint layers.

As Rauschenberg Johns is classified as a bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. In 1957, he was traded along with other artists in a New York exhibition as " Artist of the New York School, Second Generation." Through the transfer of everyday subjects that are familiar to every American, in the Art Gallery or context Johns anticipates later conceptions of Pop Art artists like Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol in the approach. At the same time he is joined by his more or less withdrawn, but basically gestural, spontaneous picturesque ductus him the preceding Abstract Expressionists such as Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline.