Jasper Johns

Happy Birthday Jasper Johns!! Contemporary painter, Johns is an American, born in 1930. Johns is described a “Pop” artist since he takes items from the popular culture and creates art from those objects. He worked in assemblage (found object sculpture) as well as painting, seeking to cross the boundary between object and image…that is the object as art. He worked with John Cage, composer, and artist, Robert Rauschenberg, in an avant-garde attempt to unify art with modern life. He is one of the few contemporary artists to work with the ancient medium of “encaustic” a suspension of pigment in hot beeswax, producing a rich luminescent effect that seems to last thousands of years. Targets and flags emerge as favorite images in John’s work. The assemblage of encaustic collage is called Target With Four Faces. Johns remains enigmatic regarding the meaning of much of his work, satisfied to let the viewer draw his/her own conclusions.