f o u r

T h e T r u s T I n G A r T I s T

on A februAry AfTernoon In 2011 In WAshInGTon, d.C., JAsper Johns

sat still in his chair on the dais in the east room of the White house

alongside notables such as poet Maya angelou, basketball legend Bill

russell, cellist yo-yo Ma, and billionaire investor and philanthro-

pist Warren Buffett. Barack obama had just placed the Presiden-

tial Medal of Freedom around the neck of one of his predecessors,

george herbert Walker Bush, to thunderous and sustained applause,

when the emcee called Johns to the fore. The artist, smartly dressed

in a dark suit and matching polka-dotted tie, rose from his seat and

stood next to the blue podium bearing the presidential seal as obama

stood behind him holding the white-enamel, star-shaped medal that

would soon be presented to him. Johnsthe first painter or sculp-

tor to be awarded the medal in 34 yearssmiled as the emcee read

aloud: Bold and iconic, the work of Jasper Johns has left lasting im-

pressions on countless americans. With nontraditional materials and

methods, he has explored themes of identity, perception, and patrio-

tism. By asking us to reexamine the familiar, his work has sparked the

minds of creative thinkers around the world. Jasper Johns innovative

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80 The ArT of The Con

creations helped shape the pop, minimal and conceptual art move-

ments, and the united states honors him for his profound influence

on generations of artists.1

The awarding of the Medal of Freedom to Johns was certainly

apt. his influence, especially on american artists, is profound, and

his body of work is widely respected. and the reference to his explo-

ration of the theme of patriotism was especially significant. in 1954,

he painted his first american flag, and the star-spangled banner be-

came the image with which the artist has become most commonly

connected. one night i dreamed that i painted a large american

flag, he recalls, and the next morning i got up and i went out and

bought the materials to begin it. he came home with three canvases,

plywood for mounting them, newspaper that he cut into strips, and

encaustic paint. This choice in pigment gives the painting a texture

that, coupled with the barely discernible strips of newsprint, begs for

closer inspection by the viewer.2

The painting was completed at a time in Johnss career during

which he was experimenting with universally recognizable symbols:

flags, targets, numbers, and letters.3 as Museum of Modern art cura-

tor anne umland pointed out, the subject matter was not a statement

of blind patriotism or allegiance, but it did carry political overtones:

underneath the pigment are strips of collaged newspapers. and

when you really begin to look at these you can see that there are

dates that are recognizable [and] they allow us to locate this painting,

this flag, this timeless symbol of our nation within a very particular

context, the 1950s in america, which is right in the midst of the Mc-

Carthy era and the beginning of the Cold War, when symbols such

as the flag would have had a very particular and potent valence.4

Johnss own comment on the work supports umlands theory. he

has said of the paintings creation, Well, it certainly wasnt out of

patriotism. it was about something you see from out of the side of

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The TruSTIng ArTIST 81

your eye and you recognize it as what it is without really seeing it. it

is the thing itself, but theres also something else there. however, he

remains somewhat coy about the true meaning of the work. i dont

think i want to describe it. . . . its probably shifted its meaning over

time.5 Perhaps most fittingly, the Whitney Museum of american

art describes it as a work that flatters or honors the nation without

genuflection.6 The price tag for the work is undeniably high: a ver-

sion of Flag offered at auction by Christies in the fall of 2014 was

listed with an estimate of $15$20 million, or about $100,000 per

square inch.7

another Flagthis time a sculpture made in 1960 by Johns

led to an earlier connection between the artist and the White house

in the 1960s, when gallery owner leo Castelli, who gave Johns his

first one-man show, brought then president John F. kennedy the

bronze on independence day. From Johnss view, the gesture wasnt

consistent with his vision. i thought it was the tackiest thing id ever

seen, Johns recalled.8 The misstep by Castelli did not damage the

relationship between the pair. in fact, they would go on to forge a

decades-long association.

CleArly, JAsper Johnss ConneCTIon to art depicting the american

flag is as indelible as edgar degass connection to ballerinas or andy

Warhols to cans of Campbells soup. and regardless of the message

of the painting, the image of the most iconic president of the twenti-

eth century posing with one of his sculptures certainly did not hurt

the value and importance of Flag.

The original 1960 sculpted metal version of Flag was given by

Johns to his partner robert rauschenberg upon completion.9 Then,

in the early 1960s, Johns had bronze sculptures of the work made by

taking a mold of the surface of his painting, pouring plaster into the

mold, and then removing the plaster, leaving him with a positive of

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82 The ArT of The Con

the paintings surface. he gave the positive of the surface to a foundry

where a process called sand casting was used to make copies. Johns

had the foundry create four bronze sculptures of Flag.

The four sculptures went very separate ways. There was the one

given to President kennedy by Castelli, which remains in the posses-

sion of Caroline kennedy schlossberg, and Johns kept one himself.

a third was acquired by financier and art collector Joseph hirshhorn

and is currently on display at the hirshhorn Museum and sculpture

garden in Washington, d.C.one of the top modern art museums

in the united states. The fourth resides with the art institute of

Chicago thanks to a bequest of katharine kuh, the art critic, curator,

and author who also owned the eponymous Chicago gallery where

she supported a large number of emerging modern artists.

in the 1980s, Johns decided to make additional sculptures based

on the original sculpted metal work he gave to rauschenberg, and

for this project he turned to Vanessa hoheb. hoheb grew up in her

fathers sculpture studio, beginning her formal apprenticeship when

she was just 16. in those early years she gained experience working

on pieces for Johns and other leading artists, including Willem de

kooning, Frederick hart, and isamu Noguchi. Perhaps most nota-

bly, at around the time Johns approached her, she was leading the

five-member team charged with restoring the skin of the statue of

liberty.10 hohebs approach was completely different, said Johns,

because she used a negative mold in which metal was poured to make

the positive. in the earlier sand casting process, the positive mold

was pressed into earth and the earth filled with metal to make the

sculpture.11 one other thing about the hoheb version that made it

different from the earlier sculptures was the fact that hers included

the frame that was around the original; earlier versions did not.

Johnss project was not complete with the hoheb mold. he then

took it to the Polich Tallix fine art foundry in upstate New york

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The TruSTIng ArTIST 83

around 1987 to make a silver cast of Flag. Polich Tallix has a long

tradition of working with the whos who of artists, including de

kooning, urs Fischer, Jeff koons, roy lichtenstein, and alexander

Calderthe last sculptor to win the Presidential Medal of Freedom

before Johns. upon completion at Polich Tallix, Johns elected to

keep the silver cast in his home in New york.

in 1990, Johns had more plans for Flag. This time he turned

to Brian ramnarine, an migr from guyana and a trusted artisan

with whom he had worked a number of times before, to make a

wax positive in his silver mold. ramnarine, who operated empire

Bronze in New york and whose work was considered by Johns to

be excellent, had handled casts for numerous of Johnss small sculp-

tures in the past. Johnss instructions to ramnarine were simple:

he told him to make only a wax impressionnot an actual metal

sculptureof Flag. at the time, Johns thought he might have his

sculpture cast in gold, and wanted to investigate how much metal

would be needed and how expensive it would be, thus the direction

to ramnarine to make only a wax figure. ramnarine obliged and

produced the 1 112foot wax sculpture, which Johns refrigerated

in his home on upscale east 63rd street in Manhattan. Though

Johns paid him in full, in cash, ramnarine failed to return the mold

from which he made the wax sculpture. eager to get his important

original mold back, Johns directed a longtime member of his staff,

James Meyer, to retrieve it from ramnarines foundry. Meyer came

back empty-handed.

yeArs lATer, JAsper Johns pAId a visit to Paige Tooker at New Foundry

New york inc. and gave her the ramnarine-made wax mold with a

request to make a new cast of Flag in white bronze. While Tooker is

certainly a very skilled craftsperson, Johnss reasons for not return-

ing to ramnarine with the wax mold he had made were based on

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