7 Works to Know by Jasper Johns: How to Decode the Artist’s Cryptic Paintings and Prints

Until 1954, Jasper Johns routinely destroyed his artworks, feeling them somehow inadequate. Then everything changed. He met artist Robert Rauschenberg, with whom he led a romantic relationship, and he was brought into the orbit of experimental composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham, both of whom enhanced Johns’s understanding of the role that everyday life could play in art. “There was a change in my spirit, in my thought and my work, as well as some doubt and terror,&