Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror

Sept 29, 2021–Feb 13, 2022

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Flags and Maps

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In 1954, Jasper Johns dreamed he painted an American flag, and the next day he set out to do so. This radical intuitive act inaugurated a way of working that has continued throughout his career: the direct transposition of common images and signs onto the surface of his art. His early motifs included not only flags but also maps, targets, alphabets, and numbers, what he described as “things the mind already knows.” Johns’s subjects shocked viewers, who found them more like everyday things than works of art at a time when abstraction predominated in New York galleries. Yet Johns’s deadpan approach opened onto a deep exploration of the philosophical boundaries between art and object, as well as representation and reality, since a painting of a flag or target could be seen both as the depiction of something and as the thing itself.

This gallery stages a face-off between Johns’s early flags and maps in black-and-white and those in color. From 1955 to 1970, he treated both these motifs across a range of mediums, palettes, and sizes, with a touch that varies from sensual to aggressive. Although Johns has repeatedly professed no particular interest in the nationalistic association of these subjects, they inevitably inspire meditations on the country and its history, present, and even future. Created when the United States was in the throes of the Cold War, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War, they conjure contradictory attitudes toward a divided nation, ranging from hope and jubilance to pessimism and despair.

The corresponding gallery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art focuses on numbers.

  • Three American flags on top of each other.
    Three American flags on top of each other.

    Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 1958. Encaustic on canvas (three panels), 30 7/8 × 45 3/4 in. (78.4 × 116.2 cm) overall. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Gilman Foundation, Inc., The Lauder Foundation, A. Alfred Taubman, Laura-Lee Whittier Woods, Howard Lipman, and Ed Downe in honor of the Museum’s 50th Anniversary 80.32. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

  • Map of the United States of America, painted in sketchy brushstrokes in blue, gray, yellow, orange, red, and green.
    Map of the United States of America, painted in sketchy brushstrokes in blue, gray, yellow, orange, red, and green.

    Jasper Johns, Map, 1963. Encaustic and collage on canvas, 60 × 93 1/4 in. (152.4 × 236.9 cm). Private collection. © 2021 Jasper Johns / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Jamie Stukenberg, Professional Graphics, Rockford, Illinois

  • A fifty-starred American flag rendered in orange with black stars and black and green stripes, over a stencil of the word "MORATORIUM."
    A fifty-starred American flag rendered in orange with black stars and black and green stripes, over a stencil of the word "MORATORIUM."

    Jasper Johns, Moratorium, 1969. Offset lithograph, sheet: 22 1/2 × 28 11/16 in. (57.2 × 72.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from Scott Rothkopf in honor of Leonard A. Lauder 2020.98. © Jasper Johns / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

  • Two maps of the United States in shades of white, stacked vertically.
    Two maps of the United States in shades of white, stacked vertically.

    Jasper Johns, Two Maps, 1965. Encaustic and collage on canvas (two panels), 90 1/8 × 70 1/4 in. (228.9 × 178.4 cm) overall. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the American Contemporary Art Foundation, Inc., Leonard A. Lauder, President, 2002.275. © 2021 Jasper Johns / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

  • Orange, green, and black American flag in the top half of the composition, mirrored by an all-gray American flag in the bottom half, and both set against a background of gray brushstrokes in varying hues.
    Orange, green, and black American flag in the top half of the composition, mirrored by an all-gray American flag in the bottom half, and both set against a background of gray brushstrokes in varying hues.

    Jasper Johns, Flags, 1965. Oil on canvas with object, 72 × 48 in. (182.9 × 121.9 cm). Collection of the artist; on long-term loan to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph courtesy the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, New York

  • Black-and-white composition of two American flags stacked one on top of the other, both rendered in sketchy strokes and scribbles within the bounds of the pattern of stars and stripes.
    Black-and-white composition of two American flags stacked one on top of the other, both rendered in sketchy strokes and scribbles within the bounds of the pattern of stars and stripes.

    Jasper Johns, Two Flags, 1960. Graphite wash and graphite pencil on paper mounted on board, 29 1/2 × 21 3/4 in. (74.9 × 55.3 cm). Collection of the artist. © 2021 Jasper Johns / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Jamie Stukenberg, Professional Graphics, Rockford, Illinois

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