Target

Jasper Johns is known for depicting inanimate, mundane objects and motifs of modern life often in monumental or hieratic forms. Here he uses a large range of tonalities of gray, black, and white, in lines, smudges, and drips both opaque and transparent to form a target, a motif he depicted beginning in 1955 in more than fifty paintings, drawings, and prints.

The AMAM drawing is, in part, a replica of a larger black-and-white painting of 1959, which was subsequently destroyed by fire in 1961. It dates from the same year Johns began making prints, and in it, he manipulates the graphite wash almost as if it were the liquid used in lithography, gaining a large variety of textures and tones. The artist stated that he preferred to paint flat symbols, such as flags and targets, because he did not need to design them-they were "things the mind already knows. That gave me room to work on other levels."

Along with Robert Rauschenberg, Johns is one of the most prominent American artists of the mid-twentieth century and helped to usher in the transition from abstract art to representational art in the 1950s and '60s. The two artists, close friends, lived in the same New York building early in their careers and influenced each other's work.