The author begins this challenging monograph by probing Modernism's surfaces and subjects, its public and private meanings, in order to establish Johns's importance as the modern allegorical artist in the years after Abstract Expressionism. Yet, Figuring Jasper Johns is not an essay that presumes to offer an instant interpretation. Rather, Fred Orton self-consciously constructs a "Jasper Johns" whose work is introduced and explained in three chapters, each of which addresses a specific picture or sculpture like Flag, Painted Bronze (Savarin) and Untitled 1992. These in-depth studies situate individual works in their social context as well as in Johns's oeuvre. Fred Orton's purpose is to get to terms with and find terms for a difficult and elusive body of work by one of the most important artists of the 20th century."

A fusion of criticism and biography, this text offers new insight into the life and work of one of America's pre-eminent living artists.

"This lavishly illustrated retrospective of Jasper Johns's work offers a new perspective on the artist's work based on his own enduring fascination with mirroring and doubles"--

Tipped-in: One sheet (1 unnumbered page: illustrations (chiefly color); 31 cm), contains artist and authors information.

This book chronicles the creative period of the 1950s and 1960s, a high point in American art. In his collaborations with Merce Cunningham and John Cage, and as a pivotal figure linking abstract expressionism and pop art, Robert Rauschenberg was part of a revolution during which artists moved art off the walls of museums and galleries and into the center of the social scene. Rauschenberg's vitally important and productive career spans this revolution, reaching beyond it to the present day. The book features the artists and the art world surrounding Rauschenberg--from Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning to Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol, together with dealers Betty Parsons, and Leo Castelli, and the patron Peggy Guggenheim.

By Frank O'Hara. Edited by Bill Berkson. Essay by Kynaston McShine.

By John Yau