Jasper Johns

The pop art pal of dancer Merce Cunningham, composer John Cage and fellow artist Robert Rauschenburg (who he worked along side as a Tiffiny's window dresser), Jasper Johns was a painter dealing with the process of looking at the absurd of the everyday within his paintings and making use of maps, numbers and flags.

I remember chosing one of his works using flags as a subject matter in a year 10 art class where we were asked to replicate an artwork of our choice. I was drawn to his bold, sometimes rough strokes and great use of colour.

He also used everyday objects in his early sculptute works and that crossed over into his painting and later, his printmaking. Teaming up with the writer Samuel Beckett in the 70's, his works displayed an abstration and overlapping of the written word, based on Beckett's texts.

If you've got some silly money to throw around, why not go here and purchase one of his originals for a cool $40,000US.