Jasper Johns

His parents divorced and he was passed around — paternal grandparents in Allendale, South Carolina, a year with his mother and stepfather in Columbia after his grandfather died in 1939, then six years with an aunt on Lake Murray. The only art he remembers from childhood was landscapes by his grandfather's first wife, hanging in relatives' houses. He began drawing at three and settled early on what he meant to be. Valedictorian at Edmunds High School in Sumter in 1947, three semesters at the University of South Carolina, then New York and Parsons in 1949. The army drafted him in 1951 and sent him to Fort Jackson and then Sendai. He returned to New York in the summer of 1953, took a job at Marboro Books, and met Robert Rauschenberg.

In 1954 he destroyed every work he still owned and began again with flags, targets, maps, letters and numbers — things the mind already knows. Flag, painted across 1954 and 1955 after he dreamed it, is encaustic, pigment suspended in melted wax, laid over newsprint collage on plywood, a method that keeps each brushstroke separate instead of letting the strokes blend. Leo Castelli walked into the studio in March 1957 and offered him a show. At the January 1958 opening, 16 of 18 works sold, and Alfred Barr bought three for the Museum of Modern Art, the first Johns paintings in any museum collection. Barr could not persuade MoMA's trustees to buy Flag itself, since they feared patriotic groups would attack it, so he arranged for the architect Philip Johnson to buy it. Johnson gave it to the museum in 1973.

He and Rauschenberg were together from 1954 to 1961, traded ideas across the studio daily, and watched the connection go largely unrecorded — it went unmentioned even in Rauschenberg's 2008 obituary. When it ended, Johns painted In Memory of My Feelings, a flag gone black with a fork and a spoon hung from it, and in 2010 the National Portrait Gallery presented it as a coded account of the relationship. Other attachments reached the record late: Susan Sontag in 1965, the poet John Giorno from 1968 to 1969. Then there is the paradox of the work. Roberta Bernstein counted 27 paintings, ten sculptures, 50 drawings and 18 print editions built on the flag between 1954 and 2002 — an image some viewers read as devotion and others as provocation, made by a man who has spent 70 years declining to say which.

The prices have done the arguing for him. David Geffen sold False Start to Anne and Kenneth Griffin in 2006 for 80 million dollars, then the most ever paid for a living artist's painting, and a 1958 Flag went privately in 2010 for a reported 110 million. The Metropolitan Museum bought White Flag in 1998, its first Johns. Barack Obama gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom on February 15, 2011, the first painter or sculptor to receive one since Alexander Calder in 1977. He is 96 and still in Sharon, Connecticut, where he has said the 170-acre property will become a residency for 18 to 24 artists after his death. The Guggenheim Bilbao mounted a 70-year retrospective in 2026.

Jasper Johns's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Flag artwork
  Encaustic, oil and newsprint collage on fabric mounted on plywood 1955
• Target with Plaster Casts artwork
  A target with body casts in boxes above it 1955
• Painted Bronze artwork
  A Savarin coffee can filled with cast paintbrushes 1960
• Map artwork
  The United States, painted as a thing already known 1961
• Foundation for Contemporary Arts company
  Co-founded with John Cage to raise money for performance artists 1963
• Racing Thoughts artwork
  Painted in two versions across 1983 and 1984 1984

• 1939 aged ~9 His grandfather dies and he is moved between relatives A year in Columbia, then six years with an aunt on Lake Murray.
• 1947 aged ~17 Graduates valedictorian of Edmunds High School in Sumter
• 1951 aged ~21 Drafted into the army and posted to Fort Jackson and Sendai
• 1953 aged ~23 Returns to New York, works at Marboro Books, meets Robert Rauschenberg
• 1954 aged ~24 Destroys the work he still owns and starts painting flags
• January 1958 aged 27 First solo show at the Leo Castelli Gallery 16 of 18 works sold and Alfred Barr bought three for the Museum of Modern Art.
• 1961 aged ~31 The relationship with Rauschenberg ends He answered it with In Memory of My Feelings — a black flag hung with a fork and spoon.
• February 15, 2011 aged 80 Receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama The first painter or sculptor to receive one since Alexander Calder in 1977.
• 2021 aged ~91 Mind/Mirror opens at the Whitney and the Philadelphia Museum of Art at once

• Robert Rauschenberg 1925–2008
  Mixed-media artist whose Combines broke down boundaries between painting and sculpture. partner and collaborator, 1954 to 1961
• Willem de Kooning 1904–1997
  Abstract expressionist whose gestural paintings helped define the New York School. the generation he answered
• Andy Warhol 1928–1987
  Pop art pioneer whose Campbell's soup cans and celebrity portraits defined contemporary American art. took the borrowed image further
• Chuck Close 1940–2021
  Photorealist painter who created monumental portrait grids and continued working after paralysis. painted his portrait
• Barack Obama b. 1961
  44th President and first African American to hold the office, known for the Affordable Care Act. gave him the Medal of Freedom