Painting In 1954, 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. His use of such symbols differentiated his paintings from the gestural abstraction of the
Abstract Expressionists, whose works were often understood as expressive of the individual personality or psychology of the artist. With well-known motifs imported into his art, his paintings could be read as both
representational (a flag, a target) and as
abstract (stripes, circles). or, that these motifs are "things the mind already knows." Indeed,
Alfred H. Barr could not convince the trustees of the
Museum of Modern Art to directly acquire the painting from Johns's first solo show, as they were afraid its ambiguity might lead to boycott or attack by patriotic groups during the
Cold War climate of the late 1950s. Barr was, however, able to arrange for the architect
Philip Johnson to buy the painting and later donate it to the museum in 1973. Johns's early and enduring use of the medium of encaustic also presented the opportunity to experiment with texture. An ancient technique, encaustic is a process whereby melted wax mixed with pigment is applied and "burned into" a support. The method allowed Johns to preserve the discrete quality of individual brushstrokes, even when layered, creating textured yet, at times, transparent surfaces. Johns's use of Togodgue's artwork without first notifying him led to a dispute that was settled amicably.
Sculpture Johns made his first sculpture,
Flashlight I, in 1958. Many of his earliest sculptures are single, freestanding objects modeled from a material called Sculp-metal, a pliable metallic medium that could be applied and manipulated much like paint or clay. During this period, he also employed casting techniques to make objects out of plaster and bronze. Some of these objects are painted to suggest a certain sense of verisimilitude;
Painted Bronze (1960), for example, depicts a can painted with the Savarin Coffee label. Filled with cast paintbrushes, the work recalls an object one might find on an artist's studio table.
Numbers (2007), which depicts his now classic pattern of stenciled numerals repeated in a grid, and is the largest single bronze Johns has made to date. Another sculpture from this period, a double-sided relief titled
Fragment of a Letter (2009), incorporates part of a letter from
Vincent van Gogh to his friend, the artist
Émile Bernard. On one side of the relief, Johns pressed each letter of van Gogh's words into the wax model. On the other side, he spelled each letter in the
American Sign Language alphabet using stamps he designed. Johns signed the wax model with impressions of his own hand, his name finger-spelled in two vertical rows.
Prints Johns began experimenting with printmaking techniques in 1960, when
Tatyana Grosman, the founder of Universal Limited Art Editions, Inc. (ULAE), invited him to her printmaking studio on Long Island. Beginning with lithographs that explore the common objects and motifs for which he is best known, such as
Target (1960), Johns continued to work closely with ULAE, publishing over 180 editions in a variety of printmaking techniques to investigate and develop existing compositions. Initially, lithography suited Johns and enabled him to create print versions of iconic depictions of flags, maps, and targets that filled his paintings. In 1971, Johns became the first artist at ULAE to utilize the handfed offset lithographic press, resulting in
Decoy — an image realized as a lithograph before it became a drawing or painting. Johns has worked with other printmakers throughout his career, producing lithographs and lead reliefs at
Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles; screenprints with Hiroshi Kawanishi at Simca Prints in New York from 1973 to 1975; and intaglios published by Petersburg Press at
Atelier Crommelynck in Paris from 1975 to 1990, including a collaboration with the author
Samuel Beckett that resulted in
Foirades/Fizzles (1976), a book of five text fragments by Beckett in French and English and 33 intaglios by Johns. He produced
Cup 2 Picasso as an offset lithograph for the June 1973 issue of the magazine
XXe siècle 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. For the May 2014 issue of
Art in America, he created an unnumbered black-and-white offset lithograph depicting many of his signature motifs. In 1995, 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 Johns's own publishing imprint. 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 Johns's set design replicates elements of Duchamp's work
The Large Glass (1915–23). Earlier, Johns also wrote
Neo-dada lyrics for
The Druds, a short-lived
avant-garde noise music art band that featured prominent members of the New York proto-
conceptual art and
minimal art community. The
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, owns
Chuck Close's large-scale portrait of Johns. In the late 1960s Johns' work was published in
0 to 9 magazine, an avant-garde journal which experimented with language and meaning-making.
Commissions In 1963, the architect
Philip Johnson commissioned Johns to make a work for what is now the David H. Koch Theater at
Lincoln Center.
Style 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. In
False Start I (1962), for example, Johns played with the relationship between signifier and signified by deliberately mislabelling colours, creating a mismatch between the written word and its visual reference. ==Valuation and awards==