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Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns's playful, enigmatic paintings interrogate the very ways in which we see and interpret the world. Beginning in the mid-1950s, Johns deliberately avoided art cut off from everyday life and made common signs, such as flags and targets, the subject of his work. Riffing on the divergent examples of Dada and Abstract Expressionism, Johns, along with his Neo-Dada collaborator Robert Rauschenberg, created a nuanced art that spoke to notions of autobiography, irreverence, and philosophical engagement. 

The reverberations of the work of Jasper Johns affected nearly every artistic movement from the 1950s through the present day. Breaking down the boundaries traditionally separating fine art and everyday life, he effectively laid the foundation for Pop Art's embrace of commodity culture. Additionally, Johns's exploration of semiotics and perception also set the stage for both Conceptual Art and more postmodern interventions in the 1980s, while his multimedia collaborations with John Cage and Merce Cunningham ushered in the dominance of Performance Art in the 1960s and 1970s.

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Decoy

Description: lithograph in colours, on Rives BFK paper, 1971
Size: 41½ x 29½ in. (1054 x 749 mm.)
Notes: signed and dated in pencil, numbered 21/55 published by Universal Ltd. Art Editions, New York, US.

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Target 1974

Description: screenprint, on Kurotani Kozo paper, 1974
Size: 38 x 26 5/8 in. (965 x 676 mm.)
Notes: igned and dated in pencil, numbered 12/30 (co-published by the artist and Simca Print Artists, Inc., New York

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Figure 8, from Black Numeral Series

Description: lithograph in black and gray, on Copperplate Deluxe paper, 1968
Size: 36 7/8 x 29 7/8 in. (940 x 762 mm.)
Notes: published by Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles, with their blindstamps

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