Images © Jasper Johns

01.12.11: Gallery

"As one gets older one sees many more paths that could be taken. Artists sense within their own work that kind of swelling of possibilities, which may seem a freedom or a confusion."
- Jasper Johns

The pivotal period in the work of Jasper Johns is between 1955-65. The book opposite, An Allegory of Painting, captures that period and reveals why it had an enormous impact on the subsequent development of pop, minimalism, and conceptual art in the United States and Europe.

Jasper Johns made a tremendous impact on Modern art in the twentieth century. As a pioneer of Pop art, he was a key figure in the postwar tradition that brought American art to the forefront of the international scene. Make no mistake, without his work then modern art wouldn't be as we know it today.

01.12.11: DECIPHERING THE CODE

Jasper Johns's art unites mastery, mystery, simplicity, and contradiction. His methodical working process combines intense deliberation and experimentation, obsessive craft, cycles of revision and repetition, and decisive shifts of direction. Johns also frequently borrows images from other artists, which, ironically, only underscores the originality of his own vision. His work occupies a key position in the art of the second half of the twentieth century.