Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting, 1955-1965

Jasper Johns (b. 1930) is one of the most significant figures in the history of postwar art. His work from 1955 to 1965 was pivotal, exercising an enormous impact on the subsequent development of pop, minimalism, and conceptual art in the United States and Europe. This is the first publication to approach Johns' work of this ten-year period through a thematic framework. It examines Johns' interest in the condition of painting as a medium, a practice, and an instrument of encoded meaning through several interrelated motifs: the target, the 'device', the naming of colours, and the imprint of the body. In this handsome book, leading scholars, a conservator, and a contemporary artist consider Johns' activity in this critical decade including many of the artist's iconic paintings, such as "Target with Four Faces" (1955), "Diver" (1962), "Periscope" (Hart Crane) (1963), and "Arrive-Depart" (1963). Their new critical and historical perspectives are grounded in an unusually close visual and material analysis of the work.