Jasper Johns’s iconic paintings of targets, first appearing in the mid-1950s, represent a pivotal moment in American art. These works, with their instantly recognizable concentric circles and flat planes of color, challenge traditional notions of representation and abstraction. By depicting a commonplace object already imbued with symbolic meaning, Johns questioned the very nature of art itself, prompting viewers to consider the relationship between image and object, perception and reality. A typical example features a standard archery target rendered in encaustic, a mixture of pigment and beeswax, lending the surface a textured, almost sculptural quality.
Emerging during the rise of Abstract Expressionism, these works offered a radical alternative to the gestural, emotionally charged canvases of the era. Johns’s focus on familiar imagery prefigured the Pop Art movement, while his exploration of semiotics the study of signs and symbols anticipated later conceptual art practices. The inherent duality of the targetboth a symbol and an object in itselfallowed Johns to explore the interplay between painting and sculpture, representation and abstraction. This artistic innovation established his importance as a key figure in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art and beyond.
