Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns came to prominence in New York in the late 1950s, when he was "discovered" by the influential art dealer Leo Castelli. By that time, he had been Robert Rauschenberg's partner for almost four years, so rather than being a discovery, his meeting Castelli was instead an inevitability. “And we went down," Castelli remembered. "And then I was confronted with that miraculous array of unprecedented images -- flags, red, white and blue... All white... Large ones... small ones, targets... numbers, alphabets. Just an incredible sight... Something one could not imagine, new and out of the blue." Castelli immediately offered Johns his first solo show from which Alfred Barr, the founding director of New York's Museum of Modern Art, purchased four works. Success was almost instantaneous for Johns. Johns' uniqueness came from his... Show more

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