35 Facts About Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns is well known for his depictions of the American flag and other US-related topics.

At multiple times works by Jasper Johns have held the title of most paid for a work by a living artist.

Jasper Johns has received many honors throughout his career, including the National Medal of Arts in 1990 and Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.

Jasper Johns was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2007.

Jasper Johns then spent a year living with his mother in Columbia, South Carolina, and thereafter, several years living with his Aunt Gladys in Lake Murray, South Carolina, twenty-two miles from Columbia.

Jasper Johns spent time with his father Jasper, Sr and stepmother, Geraldine Sineath Johns, who encouraged his art by buying materials for him to draw and paint.

Jasper Johns completed Edmunds High School class of 1947 in Sumter, South Carolina, where he lived with his mother.

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

Jasper Johns then moved to New York City and studied briefly at the Parsons School of Design in 1949.

In 1954, after returning to New York, Jasper Johns met Robert Rauschenberg and they became long-term lovers.

In 1958, gallery owner Leo Castelli discovered Jasper Johns while visiting Rauschenberg's studio.

Jasper Johns first began visiting Saint Martin in the late 1960s and bought the property there in 1972.

Jasper Johns is best known for his series of flags, maps, targets, letters and numbers, a practice he began in 1954 after burning all his previous artwork.

Jasper Johns started introducing text and numbers into his abstract paintings, such as Gray Numbers and False Start, thus reinstating content.

Jasper Johns's encaustic painting Flag, which he painted after having a dream of the American flag, marks the beginning of this new period.

Flag allowed Jasper Johns to create a painting that was not completely abstract because it depicted a symbol, yet drew attention to the graphic design of the symbol itself; was not personal because it was a national symbol, and yet, retained a sense of the handmade in the wax brushstrokes; and was not itself a literal flag, yet was not simply a painting.

Jasper Johns has made over forty variations of American flag paintings.

Jasper Johns often used plaster reliefs in his paintings, which challenge typical conceptions of paintings as two-dimensional.

Jasper Johns often used encaustic as a painting method to create bumpy, textured surfaces unusual in painting.

Jasper Johns makes his sculptures in wax first, working the surfaces in a complex pattern of textures, often layering collaged elements such as impressions of newsprint, or of a key, a cast of his friend Merce Cunningham's foot, or one of his own hand.

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

Since 1960 Jasper Johns has worked closely with Universal Limited Art Editions, Inc in a variety of printmaking techniques to investigate and develop existing compositions.

Jasper Johns has worked with Atelier Crommelynck in Paris, in association with Petersburg Press of London and New York; and Simca Print Artists in New York.

In 2000, Jasper Johns produced a limited-edition linocut for the Grenfell Press.

In 1973, Jasper Johns produced a print called Cup 2 Picasso, for XXe siecle, a French publication.

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

Jasper Johns privately assisted Robert Rauschenberg in some of his 1950s designs for Cunningham.

In spring 1963, Johns helped start the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, then intended to sponsor and raise funds in the performance field; the other founders were John Cage, Elaine de Kooning, the designer David Hayes, and the theater producer Lewis B Lloyd.

Jasper Johns later was the Merce Cunningham Dance Company's artistic adviser from 1967 to 1980.

Jasper Johns himself was a subject of a painting when Chuck Close painted him in one of his large scale portraits in 1998.

In 1964, architect Philip Johnson, a friend, commissioned Johns to make a piece for what is the David H Koch Theater at Lincoln Center.

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

The exhibition showed works from many points in Jasper Johns's career, including recent proofs of his prints.

Jasper Johns was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984.

Since the 1980s, Jasper Johns typically produces only four to five paintings a year; some years he produces none.