Happy birthday to Jasper Johns, born 83 years ago today!

When something is new to us, we treat it as an experience. We feel that our senses are awake and clear. We are alive. – Jasper Johns

Image: Installation view, “Jasper Johns: Seeing with the Mind’s Eye.”

Did you know that both Jasper Johns and Jay DeFeo were included in an exhibition at MoMA The Museum of Modern Art in 1959?

LISTEN → our latest Artcast episode considers the exhibitions that have brought both artists’ work together under the same roof. 

Image: Burt Glinn, Jay DeFeo working on “The Rose,” 1960; ©2012 Burt Glinn/Magnum Photos

Throughout his career, Jasper Johns has created over 180 works with numbers as their primary subject. 

“By detaching numerical signs from their usual context, Johns focuses on their essence both as familiar signposts that permeate contemporary life and as potently charged entities embedded in memory.” - Roberta Bernstein

Image: Installation view, Jasper Johns: Seeing with the Mind’s Eye.

We see a lot of good tweets from the galleries and streets but this one’s got us feelin’ sweet and singin’ to a beat.

According to Jasper Johns, good paintings should convey a sense of life.

This wall text was taken from Jasper Johns: Seeing with the Mind’s Eye, now on view at SFMOMA.

Suppose you were the most famous, honored and affluent painter in America, and possibly the world. How would you live?

Just a little peek at what you’ll soon be seeing around town in San Francisco… :)

Jasper Johns, Target with Four Faces (1955)

(via MoMA)

Happy 82nd birthday to Jasper Johns!

From our website: In the 1950s Jasper Johns developed a distinctive painting style that would help lead American art away from the then-dominant movement of Abstract Expressionism. The exact correspondence of figure and ground in his work challenged the traditional distinction between an object and its depiction. At the same time, variations on each theme dissolved the “natural” link between the symbol and its meaning. Johns thus questioned the basic underpinnings of our representational system, and specifically the mechanisms of fine art.

Pictured: Jasper Johns, Flag (1960-1969) 

TONIGHT! Curator 1-on-1: Sarah Roberts on Jasper Johns’s “Canvas.” More info HERE.

mountainofclouds:

Jasper Johns, by Dennis Hopper, 1964

TONIGHT! Curator 1-on-1: Sarah Roberts on Jasper Johns’s “Canvas.” More info HERE.

hottiesofarthistory:

Jasper Johns