William Grant Still American Composers
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Contemporary American pop artisan Jasper Johns was born in 1930 in Augusta, Georgia. Raised in South Carolina, from a young age Jasper Johns wanted to be an artist. After attending three semesters at the University of South Carolina, he headed for New York in 1948 to attend the Parsons School of Design, where he attended for one semester before enrolling in the army and subsequently serving for two years for the duration of the Korean War. Johns’ friendship with artisan Robert Rauschenberg was an indispensable influence in his artistic career. His other friends of the time included composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham. Johns’ early work of the 1950s displays a new style which contributed to numerous further art movements including Conceptual, Minimal, and Pop art. This new style brought out by Johns was said to oppose the expressionistic abstraction of a generation earlier. The characteristic work of this amount of time is the “Flag” (1954-55) depicting the American Stars and Stripes flag. The technique employed for this work was the dripping encaustic paint on a collage made from commonly found materials such as newspaper. This was followed by “White Flag” (1955) which is a big monochrome version of the former work. These were followed by a great deal of other versions of the introductory flag painting. These include the oil on paper work, “Flag” (1957) and “Three Flags” (1958) that features three canvases superimposed on one another in reverse perspective. The choice of the American flag represents “things the mind already knows,” according to Jasper Johns. Other intimate objects used in Johns’ paintings include stenciled numbers, targets, and beer cans. Another suggestion made for the choice of the American flag has been the autobiographical element, as Jasper Johns was named after Sergeant William Jasper who raised the flag for the duration of the Revolutionary War. However, the signification of the flag is still open to reinterpretation with yet another suggestion made that the flag, being a flat object, represents the relative shallowness of modernist art. Other characteristic examples of John’s work include “Map” (1962), “Numbers”, “False Start” (1959), “Study for Skin” (1962), “Figure Five” (1963-64), “Painting with Two Balls” (1960) and “Seasons” (1986). The ’70s were characterized by more monotone works initiated by the prints Johns formulated to accompany writer Samuel Beckett’s text, “Fizzles”. The ’80s witnessed further alter in his paintings, with autobiographical constituents appearing, and more sentiments being displayed as opposed to his earlier view that he was unconcerned with emotions. Johns’ works have commanded outstanding prices. “False Start” was purchased by Anne and Kenneth Griffin, private collectors, in 2006 for $80 million. It’s the most eminent price salaried for a painting by a living artist. Jasper Johns remains one of the foremost figures in American pop art. His focus on usual imagery, and his experiments that push the envelope of painting, sculpture and printmaking set the standards for future experimental artists. The fact that his paintings are share of almost any major collection of a museum highlights his influence and importance in the contemporary art scene. Though he is often times classified as a Pop artist, his work displays characteristic of Neo-Dadaism. |
William Grant Still–