Jasper Johns - Editions & Works on Paper New York Monday, October 24, 2022 | Phillips

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  • In response to Nixon, the anti-war left began to organize a non-rational, symbolic response: multi-city marches and demonstrations, to be called the Moratorium Marches. Around the world, millions would participate, with half a million marching on Washington, D.C. Yet faced with such a massive chorus of rage and disapproval, Nixon effectively shrugged. “Under no circumstances,” he said, “will I be affected by [them].”

     

    To raise money for the anti-war movement, a Los Angeles gallerist commissioned Jasper Johns to produce a poster. The war was, to the anti-war folk, so obviously corrupt; marshaling more arguments would be playing a rigged game. They didn’t need more thoughts. They needed a symbol that was so blatant that it was impossible to misunderstand, yet vague enough to lodge in the mind and irritate it. Hence, Johns produced a flag — another symbol so self-contained that it needed no definition — but unlike the red-white-and-blue flags he had painted a decade before, the Moratorium flag was distorted, sickly. — PBS, 2015

    • Literature

      Universal Limited Art Editions S5

    • Artist Biography

      Jasper Johns

      American • 1930

      Jasper Johns is a painter and printmaker who holds a foundational place in twentieth century art history. Quoting the evocative gestural brushstroke of the Abstract Expressionists, Johns represented common objects such as flags, targets, masks, maps and numbers: He sought to explore things "seen and not looked at, not examined" in pictorial form.  Drawing from common commercial and 'readymade' objects, such as newspaper clippings, Ballantine Ale and Savarin Coffee cans, Johns was a bridge to Pop, Dada and Conceptual art movements.

      Beyond the historical significance, each work by Johns is individually considered in sensuous form. A curiosity of medium led him to employ a range of materials from encaustic and commercial house paint to lithography, intaglio and lead relief.

      View More Works

28

Flag (Moratorium) (U.L.A.E. S5)

1969
Offset lithograph in colors, on wove paper, with margins
I. 17 x 25 7/8 in. (43.2 x 65.7 cm)
S. 20 1/4 x 28 5/8 in. (51.4 x 72.7 cm)

Signed and numbered 123/300 in pencil, published by the Committee Against the War in Vietnam, unframed.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$20,000 - 30,000 

Sold for $25,200

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Editions & Works on Paper

New York Auction 24 - 26 October 2022