Jasper Johns Biography
Jasper Johns (1930 - ) American legend Jasper Johns is credited with helping to define the transition period between Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism. Johns creates a formal abstraction from the American Stars and Stripes in Flag (1954-1955), a collage of paper, encaustic oil, and fabric that is perhaps his best-known piece. Johns, born in Augusta, Georgia in 1930, left the University of South Carolina after a year to go to New York. Here he meets John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg. Johns's sculptural paintings and readymades, along with those of his close friend Rauschenberg, represented the revival of Marcel Duchamp's influence on modern art. Their Neo-Dada artworks corresponded to developments made by pop artists such as Andy Warhol by fusing the popular iconography of signs, maps and targets. Johns received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 as well as the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1988. He currently lives and works in Sharon, Connecticut. The Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the Tate Gallery in London, among others, have works by the artist in their collections.
