Jasper Johns
(May 15, 1930 - living) U.S.A.
Painter
Johns was born in Atlanta, Georgia. His parents separated, mostly because of his father's drinking problem, when the future artist was only one. Too poor to support herself and a young child, Johns's mother left her son with his paternal grandfather, who died when Johns was nine. Johns drew and painted all through his childhood, though mostly alone; he rarely saw work of other artists, and few people cared about his own work.
In 1947, he enrolled at the University of South Carolina, but he studied there for only two years before moving to New York. Soon after destroying his art, Johns dreamed he was painting a large American flag. That same year, he painted his first one using the technique of encaustic.
By 1955, Johns was living and working in a loft on Pearl Street in New York. Robert Rauschenberg, five years older and already famous for his erasure of a de Kooning drawing, moved into the same building. The two artists became lovers and maintained a relationship through painting each other's pictures and sharing their art.
In the early 1960s, affirmed by the success of his flag paintings, Johns spent time at his beach house in South Carolina. The 1960s and 1970s saw Johns's dedicated exploration continue with various media and designs. He began to use screenprints, photographic reproductions, neon, and metal, and also produced some of the largest works of his career.
In both his past and recent work, Johns has constantly disturbed the complacent order of the viewer's mind, whose barriers begin to crumble in face of this challenging art. In Johns's "clear-sighted enigmas" the spectator begins to come to terms with the world of an artist whose goal lies in understanding the moment in its own context.
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