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| wildbrush's art.to.day | |||
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JOHNS Jasper, born 1930 Augusta (GA). American painter. |
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| 1947-48 | Studied
at the University of South Carolina. |
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| 1949 | Attended
art school in New York, followed by two years in the army including a
posting to Japan. |
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| 1952 | Returned
to New York, where he earned his living selling books. |
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| 1954 | Worked
with Rauschenberg as a window decorator for department stores. |
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| 1956/57 | Began
to integrate objects into his paintings. Contact with Leo Castelli. |
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| 1958 | First
solo-exhibition in 1958 in the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York,
generally heralded as the beginning of Pop Art. |
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| 1959 | Carnegie
Prize at the Pittsburgh Biennale. Participated in a happening with
Kaprow. |
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| 1960 | First
lithographs; later, further graphic works for ULAE (Universal Limited
Art Edition). |
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| 1961 | Set
designs and costumes for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
Collaboration with the composer John Cage. |
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| 1963 | Set
up a foundation for contemporary performance art. |
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| 1964 | Participation in the documenta 3 in Kassel. | ||
| 1967 | Prize at the São Paulo Biennale. | ||
| 1968 | Participation in the documenta 4 in Kassel. | ||
| 1972 | Participation in the documenta 5 in Kassel. | ||
| 1975 | Illustrations for Beckett's 'Fizzles/Foirades'. | ||
| 1977 | Participation in the documenta 6 in Kassel. | ||
| 1988 | Important prize for painting at the Venice Biennale. | ||
Together with Rauschenberg, Johns is considered one of the artists who brought key innovations to modern art after abstract expressionism. When abstract expressionism still reigned unchallenged, Johns already began to depict objective subject-matter on a relatively narrow repertoire of images, for example the American flag, letters, numbers or targets. Instead of altering these two-dimensional things and symbols, he adopted their design to create abstract paintings in which content, form, and support (the flat canvas) became inseparable. The consequence of this unity was that the 'meaning' of the image resided solely in the surface qualities of the canvas or paper on which it appeared. Johns went so far as to maintain that his works represented 'information' pure and simple. He also produced assemblages of real objects as well of commonplace objects which he encased in molten metal (sculptmetals). Johns' works are based on the contradictions that result from a blurring of the borderlines between reality and art. Can (e.g.) beer cans, cast in bronze and painted, be art? Does the artistic process transform them into monuments to trivial culture, or do they simply remain trivial relics? Such questions about the interrelationship between reality and art become even more complex in the case of 'Passage', the painting of 1962. In keeping with the title, everything here is in flux. The spelled-out primary colors - red, yellow, blue - actually appearas greyed, mixed hues; that is, the color designations do not actually coincide with the depicted colors themselvers. |
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