31 Facts About Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns graduated as valedictorian from Edmunds High School in 1947 and briefly studied art at the University of South Carolina before moving to New York City and enrolling at Parsons School of Design.

Jasper Johns's education was interrupted by military service during the Korean War.

Jasper Johns was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1973 and the American Philosophical Society in 2007.

Jasper Johns has supported the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and contributed significantly to the National Gallery of Art's print collection.

Jasper Johns is a co-founder of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

Jasper Johns began drawing at the age of three and knew very early on that he wanted to be an artist, despite having little exposure to the arts where he grew up.

Jasper Johns spent summer holidays with his father, Jasper, Sr.

Jasper Johns graduated as valedictorian of Edmunds High School class of 1947 in Sumter, South Carolina, where he lived with his mother and her family.

Jasper Johns studied art for a total of three semesters at the University of South Carolina at Columbia, from 1947 to 1948.

In 1951, Jasper 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.

Jasper Johns has lived and worked in various homes and studios in New York City throughout his career and, from 1973 to 1987, maintained a rustic 1930s farmhouse with a glass-walled studio in Stony Point, New York.

Jasper Johns began visiting the Caribbean island of Saint Martin in the late 1960s, buying property there in 1972, and, later, building a home and studio, for which Philip Johnson was the principal designer.

In 1954, Jasper 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.

The motif allowed Jasper Johns to create a painting that was not completely abstract because it depicts a symbol, yet it draws attention to the design of the symbol itself.

Jasper Johns is known for including three-dimensional objects in his paintings.

The method allowed Jasper Johns to preserve the discrete quality of individual brushstrokes, even when layered, creating textured yet, at times, transparent surfaces.

Numbers, which depicts his classic pattern of stenciled numerals repeated in a grid, and is the largest single bronze Jasper Johns has made to date.

On one side of the relief, Jasper Johns pressed each letter of van Gogh's words into the wax model.

Jasper Johns signed the wax model with impressions of his own hand, his name finger-spelled in two vertical rows.

Jasper Johns began experimenting with printmaking techniques in 1960, when Tatyana Grosman, the founder of Universal Limited Art Editions, Inc, invited him to her printmaking studio on Long Island.

Jasper Johns produced Cup 2 Picasso as an offset lithograph for the June 1973 issue of the magazine XXe siecle and, in 2000, completed an edition of 26 linocuts printed by the Grenfell Press and published by Z Press to accompany Jeff Clark's Sun on 6.

In 1995, Jasper Johns hired master printmaker John Lund and began to construct his own printmaking studio on his property in Sharon, Connecticut.

Low Road Studio was officially founded in 1997 as Jasper Johns's own publishing imprint.

For decades Jasper Johns worked with others to raise both funds and attention for Merce Cunningham's Dance Company.

Jasper Johns assisted Robert Rauschenberg in some of his 1950s designs for Cunningham's sets and costumes.

Jasper Johns continued his support of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and served as an artistic adviser from 1967 to 1980.

In 1968 Cunningham made a Duchamp-inspired theater piece, Walkaround Time, for which Jasper Johns's set design replicates elements of Duchamp's work The Large Glass.

In 1963, the architect Philip Johnson commissioned Johns to make a work for what is the David H Koch Theater at Lincoln Center.

Jasper Johns's work is sometimes grouped with Neo-Dada and pop art: he uses symbols in the Dada tradition of the readymades of Marcel Duchamp, but unlike many pop artists such as Andy Warhol, he does not engage with celebrity culture.

Jasper Johns was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1989.

Jasper Johns was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1973 and the American Philosophical Society in 2007.