"The 50th Anniversary of the Whitney Museum of American Art (Double Flag)" by Jasper Johns, 1979, Lithograph

Jasper Johns : (born in 1930) is an american artist. The american Pop Art has its roots in him and Robert Rauschenberg. He painted series on canvas representing flags, numbers, or targets. Then, he represented daily life objects such as kitchen tools, cutlery, cans, which he integrated in his work. False Start, sold 80 millions of dollars, is the most expensive work of arts form a living artist. After studying art in South Carolina and then in New York, he met Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham and John Cage, with whom he worked and explored the contemporary art scene, and started developping their own vision of Art. Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg became lovers and lived together for a long time. Like Rauschenberg, he was fascinated by Marcel Duchamp, and decided to make his own ready made, but his were built up. This led to his first american flags, targets, alphabets, numbers... He was 25 years old only when he made his first masterpieces such as Flag 1954/55 of the MOMA, Green target in 1955 or Target with plaster casts. Leo Castelli, the famous art dealer visited him in 1958, and decided to exhibit his works. On the opening day, Alfred Barr, the chief Curator of the MOMA, was so stunned by his works that he bought two of them. At 28 years old, Jasper Johns was already becoming a star Johns continued working on some series - targets and flags - and developped new ones like the alphabets. In 1959 he painted a series of abstract canvas, in the style of Abstract expressionnism. In the 1960's, the Pop Art of Andy Warhol and Lichtenstein emerged. Johns is seen as a Pop Art artist, but compared to the 1960's Warhol pop art, his work seems more complex. He would rather fit in "neo dadaism" like Rauschenberg.