Jasper Johns- Abstract Expressionist
Jasper Johns is an American artist born in Augusta, Georgia.
He had a difficult childhood. His parents separated and he was brought up by different people in his family Jasper Johns is most associated with ‘Pop Art’ but is also described as a ‘Neo-Dadaist’. Jasper Johns was inspired by Marcel Duchamp who rejected art Neo Dadaism: Like Dadaism its purpose was to ridicule the meaninglessness of the modern world. He is famous for incorporating encaustic, (wax) collage and plaster into his paintings. The collage was often newspaper Johns most famous work is ‘Flag’ 1954-1955, which depicts the American flag. It is richly layered with encaustic, collage and paint. As well as a painter Johns was a printmaker and sculptor. His sculptures were often everyday objects. Jasper Johns was in a romantic relationship with Robert Rauschenberg. |
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JASPER JOHNS "NUMBERS"In the 1950's and 60's artists like Jackson Pollock (remember the marble paintings in Kindergarten) were challenging the art world with completely abstract paintings and no subject matter. You had to "get" what the artist was trying to do in order to understand the paintings. Although that style (abstract expressionism) was very popular, other artists wanted to return art to recognizable things. Jasper Johns was one of those who believed art should be more accessible to more people.
He chose familiar two-dimensional objects like flags, targets and maps as subjects because he thought that if he used "things the mind already knows" then it would give him room to work his art "on other levels." One of his favorite subjects to use over and over again was letters and numbers. Everybody can recognize letters and numbers! Johns would then play with color and TEXTURE (he loved experimenting with melted wax, a very old technique called encaustic that the ancient Egyptians and Romans used). He wanted to create fun patterns, so that we would look at the letters and numbers in new way. The shape and pattern of the image helps us see them as something interesting and pretty, beyond just being numbers and letters. And the texture created by wax or other thick applications of paper and paint created another level of interest. PROJECT
1. Students choose 4 numbers that they like. Choose something meaningful, perhaps your birthday. For example December 15 would be 1215. 2. Using the templates handed out by Ms. O'Brien, Link HERE , draw the large numbers large on your paper in same size overlapping them and create space to paint sections. Refer to reference below. 3. Remember to choose a color scheme. 4. Paint the areas in flat washes and use different values of the paint (lights and darks) by using different amounts of water. |