At a time when the emotionally-charged paintings of Abstract Expressionism dominated the American avant-garde, Jasper Johns began to reframe everyday objects and symbols as valid subjects for fine art. Drawing influence from the traditions of Dada—particularly the absurdist humour and use of ready-made subject matter—his work was identified with the Neo-Dada movement and became a foundation for American Pop art.

Targets—specifically targets composed of five concentric circles in alternating rings of blue and yellow, on a red background—are another motif repeated in Johns’ paintings and prints. In a play on words, the print Target with four faces 1979 swaps object with signifier by substituting the four plaster ‘faces’ of the 1955 painting of the same name with the word ‘FACE’.^[i]

Alice Desmond

^[i] Collection Museum of Modern Art, New York, at https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78393, accessed 3 April 2018.