Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting, 1955-1965

by Jeffrey Weiss

John Elderfield, Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, Robert Morris, and Kathryn Tuma

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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’s work of this ten-year period through a thematic framework. It examines the artist's 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 colors, and the imprint of the body.
In this handsome book, leading scholars, a conservator, and a contemporary artist consider Johns’s activity in this critical decade and discuss many of his 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 Johns's work.

Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington


Exhibition Schedule:

National Gallery of Art, Washington (January 28 – April 29, 2007)

Kunstmuseum Basel (June 2 – September 9, 2007)

  • ISBN10 0300121415
  • ISBN13 9780300121414
  • Publish Date 30 January 2007
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 4 March 2021
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint Yale University Press
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 296
  • Language English