Megan Mullarky

Jasper Johns and Methodology

Art History 500
Marek Wieczorek
The Deafening Result of Broken Devices:
Jasper Johns and His Use of Signifiers in a Social Context
When Leo Castelli offered Jasper Johns his first one-man show at his New York gallery in 1958,
the American public did not immediately accept the value of the displayed works, as many of them
were far from understood as traditional paintings. From the perspective of a typical museum visiter,
the works in the exhibition were static and unexpressive. However, when Alfred Barr purchased four
works from this exhibition to hang at the Museum of Modern Art it became clear that this first show
undoubtedly marked Johnss entrance to the post-modern era of painting. Since the initial
apprehension of the public in 1958, scholars in turn have come to sensationalize the work of Johns and
his paintings have been discussed from a variety of methodological perspectives. Examples of essays
dedicated to Johns include perspectives involving psychoanalysis, semiotics, and the examination of
social history. With respect to the wide array of perspectives applied to scholarship on Johns, it is
important to evaluate to what extent each method can apprehend meaning in a particular work in
addition to the assessment of precisely the degree to which each meaning is compelling. This essay
explores the advantages as well as possible oversights of several methodological approaches to specific
works by Jasper Johns.
In 1996, Roberta Bernstein published an essay analyzing a particular grouping of Johnss works
from a psychoanalytic perspective. She specifically discusses a 1986 drawing called Untitled (fig. 4),
and an untitled oil painting from 1991 (fig. 5). The earlier drawing is a simple, drawn portrait of a
female face depicted in a flesh colored background, while the later work is a similar portrait set within
the picture plane of a large, purple canvas. Yet within both works, the female face is depicted as a set
of fragmented features. In the first drawing, the eyes of the woman are forced to the boundaries of the

picture plane, while the nose remains central and the mouth lies atop the bottom border. In the later
1991 oil painting, a similar conglomeration of facial features seeks to present a female portrait within a
larger field of canvas. Bernstein seeks to explain the nature of each female portrait through several
previous works that she defines as a direct psychological trigger for Johnss depiction of a dismantled
face. The particular works outlined by Berstein include a painting by Picasso and a drawing by an
anonymous young girl suffering from Schizophrenia.i Bernstein claims that Picassos 1936 Woman in
a Straw Hat (fig. 3), depicting a woman whose features are bizarrely configured, acted as a
psychological trigger for Johnss articulation of the female face in his 1986 work, but ultimately
claims that while Picassos painting initially sparked Johnss interest in this manner of portraiture, his
works were primarily defined by the psychological experience of viewing the drawing of a young,
female mental patient.ii
Created by a young girl suffering from Schizophrenia, Bernstein cites the drawing The Baby
Drinking the Mothers Milk from the Breast (fig. 2), in order to contend that this work served to force
Johns into the recollection of a primitive, childlike view of the world.iii This particular understanding
of the female form would have been prior to the spatial awareness of oneself which develops in what
Lacan calls the mirror phase. The experience of seeing oneself in a mirror and being able to identify
oneself as unified within a certain space differs greatly from the primitive conception of space prior to
this phase, shown in The Baby Drinking the Mothers Milk from the Breast, in which figures are viewed
as a set of dislocated bodily fragments. Prior to viewing oneself in the mirror for the first time, an
infant is unaware of his or her own limits as a single body and therefore is equally unable to recognize
other figures as singular entities. This idea is manifested in the drawing of this young patient, as it
portrays the mother from the perspective of a pre-mirror phase child looking up at the face of the
mother, unable to organize the facial features as unified but rather, sees them as they are literally
perceived, separate and dislocated.iv This primitive, disorderly view of figural forms through the eyes
of a child is what Bernstein argues caused the strange separation of the womans facial features seen in

both mentioned works of Johns. In particular, the composition of the female face appearing in the
center of the 1991 oil painting is nearly identical to that of the drawing cited by Bernstein, thereby
substantiating her claim of the connection between the two works. In unearthing this relationship,
Bernstein ultimately claims that Johnss psyche was distinctly influenced by the art of others, ranging
from the drawing of a young mentally ill patient to a famous portrait by Pablo Picasso, whose works
forced Johns into a psychological process in which he impressed his own consciousness these artworks,
manifesting his own memories, experience, and knowledge upon a newly developed work that would
be uniquely altered by unconscious recollections of childhood.v
While Bernsteins essay seeks to explain the psychological factors that influenced Johnss production
of certain works, the scope of this explanation is at times limited. For instance, in her discussion of
Johnss oil painting from 1991, Bernstein speaks only to the fragmented representation of the depicted
woman. She states that the portrayal of the female figure remains a manifestation of Johns own
consciousness in response to the childlike state of viewing woman as seen in that of The Baby Drinking
the Mothers Milk from the Breast. However, there are a variety of questions that remain unanswered,
and moreover, entirely unable to be answered by exclusively psychoanalytic discussion. While the
portrait of the woman in this work is important to note, the remainder of the work is entirely ignored.
The color of the deep purple background of the canvas, the painted nails, which appear to pin the
female portrait to the picture place and suggest a painting within a painting, and the stencils at the
bottom which indicate Johnss signature, all remain unable to be examined from Bernsteins
psychoanalytic perspective. The method utilized to discuss this portrait is only able to consider the
single aspect of this work that snugly fits into psychoanalytic discussion. Furthermore, the suggestion
that Johns immediately appropriated the memory of the experience of a looking up at his mother
through a primitive view of the world by witnessing this manifestation firsthand in the artwork of the
mental patient is a fairly literal, and perhaps even reductive, method of viewing his 1991 oil painting.

Yet a semiotic approach to either work mentioned by Bernstein may be able to better explain
the manner of each female portrait without reducing its inspiration to the psychological process of
revisiting specific childhood memories, and additionally serve to better discuss each work with respect
to its complexities of meaning. In fact, in having already related Johnss work to that of Picasso a
discussion predicated on semiotic principles is entirely logical. By 1936, the year Picasso created
Woman in a Straw Hat, he had already challenged the perceptual significance of specific signifiers
during the duration of his analytic and synthetic cubist phase. Picassos disintegration of the female
form in this 1936 painting could indicate a continuation of his interest in the manner by which an image
can be read with limited visual information through a series of signifiers. Though the face in this
portrait is not constructed in a typical manner, the viewer reads it as such due to several important
features, namely the presence of two eyes, a mouth, and a nose. There is no evidence to suggest that
Johns did not read this portrait as an exploration of the construction of meaning through disintegrated
features, and that his exposure to the later drawing by the young mental patient did not merely increase
his interest the exploration of visual signifiers. Therefore, his 1986 drawing, Untitled, as well as the
female portrait in his untitled 1991 oil painting, may simply indicate a similar usage of signifiers,
inspired by the constructions of meaning presented by both Picasso and the mental patient. The works
mentioned by Bernstein can be discussed in terms of Johnss exhibited interest in questioning the
constructs of meaning through visual signifiers rather than merely grounded in childhood memories
and subconscious recollections of a primitive view of the world.
Semiotics, in fact, allows several of Johnss early works to be viewed in all their complexity.
In particular, Harry Coopers 2009 essay, Speak, Painting: The Early Work of Johns, discusses the
use of visual and linguistic devices in Johns 1959 work, Device Circle (fig. 1). This painting exhibits a
circular field of paint created with the use of a ruler, which is attached to the canvas itself; thereby
exhibiting its use in the creation of the work. The circular field is set within a background of frenzied,
brightly colored brushstrokes, and placed above the barely legible, stenciled words, Device Circle.

With the attachment of the ruler, the work exists as both a painting and the demarcation of an
abandoned device once used to create the work.vi It exudes the presence of both an image and an object
that once had a distinct use in the world, rendering Device Circle both a painting and the demonstration
of a thing, a circle-creating device.
In his essay, Cooper initiates his argument by explaining the function of the words device
circle at the base of the painting. In fact, this phrase appears both stenciled on the front of the canvas
and written by Johns on the back. According to Cooper, the word device had particular resonance
with Johns,vii and likely influenced the utilization of this term twice in the creation of Device Circle.
The word particularly influenced Johns due to his fascination with Duchamp, who had used the word
device in his notes describing his Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, a work Johns was openly
fascinated with.viii In addition, Cooper speculates that John was further intrigued by the word due to its
use in Russian Formalism, a school of literary analysis founded by Viktor Shklovsky and Roman
Jakobson. Johns was particularly intrigued by these formalists, who reminded him that while
mechanical devices are prized for straightforwardness, artistic devices carry the suspicion of
manipulation, even deceit.ix
After concluding that the word device was of particular significance to the function of the
words in this work, Cooper returns to the importance of the words written on the back of the painting.
This particular demarcation is very likely the title of the work, as indicated by its placement on the
back of the canvas.x After perceiving this phrase as the title, Cooper notes in this instance that unlike
the unpunctuated phrase stenciled onto the front of the word, the back phrase appears as device
(circle). In acknowledging this difference Cooper concludes that in this case, device is the subject
of the phrase while circle is its modifying adjective.xi Therefore, the work itself is named a device
and the word circle merely suggests that geometric physical state of the mentioned device. This
statement, with the use of the parentheses, is significantly less arbitrary than that appearing within the
work, whose meaning without such punctuation is entirely capricious.

While device (circle) references a device taking the form of a circle, the intended implication of
device circle is less clear. The latter phrase could indicate the identical meaning of the former
phrase, or contrarily be in reference to a circle that happens to function as a device, reversing the role
of the noun and descriptive adjective. Both words in the stenciled phrase can at one point function as
the object or its modifying adjective, which Cooper acknowledges in stating that neither gets to be the
noun all the time.xii Yet despite the ambiguous reading of the meaning of the phrase in terms of
grammatical interpretation, he asserts that the words device circle undoubtedly act as the caption of
the object in space above them, marking the presence of an image the viewer can be lead to understand
as the device circle.xiii In advocating in favor of such a relationship between the words and image in
this work, Cooper manufactures the structure of a positive relationship between the words device
circle and the visual object set within the painting.
Cooper constructs this assertion within Device Circle through several contentions, each
perpetuating the idea that device circle is the caption of the image and thereby indicating a positive
relationship between the meaning of the stenciled words and that of the circular form. First, he claims
that this work may depict a painting within a painting,xiv as the captioned circle can be viewed as a
separate painting framed within the total work. Cooper contends that the words device circle support
this idea in two ways. First, they act as a caption for the circle, thereby separating its existence from
that of the total work. Second, they provide a literal frame for the circle by residing beneath it. The
duality of the both physical and ideological framework provided by these words is viewed by Cooper
as performing the exact role of a caption, which is to capture the image.xv Ultimately, the capturing
of the image in the work with the presence of words which directly refer to its presence is viewed by
Cooper to pin together the image and the words. Therefore, the visual and linguistic devices activated
in this work are no longer in tension, but generate a tenuous yet united relationship between the image
and its caption. It is within this final claim, in my opinion, that Cooper may overlook the complexity of
Device Circle, particularly oversimplifying the complicated relationships between signifiers and the

variety of their possible meanings at work within this painting. While I propose to amend his semiotic
approach by denying the presence of an affirmative relationship between the words and image in this
painting, it is necessary to first explain his reasoning in claiming the opposite.
Cooper first attempts to corroborate his argument through a discussion of Johnss interest in the
work of Ren Magritte. In examining this relationship, he claims that Device Circle was haunted by
the legacy of Magrittes preceding work, The Treachery of Images. One of his most famous works,
Magrittes painting depicts an image of a pipe set within a beige picture place, placed above the words,
this is not a pipe. This declaration states that the image itself is not a pipe, and that the words
themselves are not a non-pipe.xvi Both visual and linguistic signifiers in this work are exposed as
unable to produce a particular meaning outside of their own limited existence as either an imaged or
verbal form. Neither are inherently related to a thing which exists outside of its own lonely, isolated
presence within the painting. Yet while Magritte actively promotes this idea of negation in his work,
Cooper claims that Johns contrarily asserts the presence of a direct pathway of meaning between words
and image in Device Circle. He argues that Device Circle differs from The Treachery of Images in its
affirmative rather than negative relation between word and image: [this is] a device circle not this is
not a pipe.xvii
Furthermore, Cooper relies upon Michel Foucaults discussion of Magrittes painting as further
evidence of the positive relationship created in Johnss work. In The Treachery of Images, Foucault
claims that the p in the word pipe refers to the shape of the image of the pipe, creating a calligram.
Similarly, Cooper claims that Johnss Device Circle depicts letters whose shapes mirror the roundness
of the circle above them, and that they are infected by its rotundity.xviii Therefore, Cooper ultimately
concludes, through his use of Foucaults previous argument, that this affirmation is implicit, it is
enforced by the style of the letters themselves.xix
Yet Cooper, in my opinion, injures his semiotic discussion of this work in his advocacy for the
existence of this affirmative relationship between the words and image of Device Circle. The existence

of a positive relationship between visual and linguistic signifiers is particularly challenging when
attempting to support this contention in reference to Magritte, whose work seeks to disprove the
possibility of an affirmative relationship between words and images. The awareness that the image of
the pipe not a pipe in its physical form is evident to a viewer, yet it is important to note that in this
instance Magritte also notes that the word pipe is equally unrelated to the image and the thing as it
exists in the world. While Johnss Device Circle differs slightly from Magrittes, namely due to the
presence of the ruler that denotes the work as both image and used device, both the image factor and
use factor of this work are unrelated to the marks on the canvas which spell the words device circle.
The broken pathways of meaning that Magritte sought to expose are likewise indicated in Johnss work,
despite Coopers insistence otherwise. Yet most importantly, the use of Magrittes work to substantiate
the existence of a positive relationship between visual and linguistic signifiers is altogether futile due to
Magrittes ultimate ambition to disprove such an assertive relationship.
Moreover, the citation of Foucaults discussion of Magritte is equally illogical. Most
particularly, Coopers argument regarding the formal aspects of the letting in Device Circle is
somewhat overly optimistic. In my opinion, the letters spelling the words device circle could not be
described as rotund.xx Of course, the curved corners of the block letters are rounded rather than
sharply square, but they are not at all what I would as infected byrotundity. Furthermore, the
typography was entirely dependent upon the type of stencil used to create this work. In fact, when
questioned about his lack of variety in lettering, Johns simply stated, Thats how the stencils come.xxi
Yet while Coopers ultimate objective in citing Foucaults discussion of the p resembling the image
of Magrittes pipe is to find a similar phenomenon in Johnss work in order to assert the relationship
between device circle and the circular image, Cooper overlooks the circumstance that he and
Foucault argue in favor of opposite conclusions. In linking Device Circle to both Magritte and
Foucault in advocating for the existence of an affirmative relationship between visual and linguistic
signifiers, Cooper renders a previously successful semiotic discussion somewhat illogical, and

furthermore in doing so may be overlooking a key aspect of the truly deceitful complexity of this
painting.
In my opinion, Cooper falls victim within his essay to a trap that Johns ingeniously stages for his
viewers. Unlike Magrittes work, which somewhat obviously disintegrates pathways of meaning
between words and images, Johnss similar yet more veiled statement seeks to ensnare his viewer in a
variety of assumptions. The problematic postulation that the words device circle caption the
presence of the circle in pictorial space is deeply indebted to the humanistic temptation to equate these
meanings, an assumption of which I believe Johns remained fully aware. Deceitfully, he stages these
assumptions by inciting an exploration of presence and absence in this work. For instance, though a
fairly literal example, the words at the bottom of the work appear with the use of a tool that functions
by creating presence where there is absence. When one paints on top of a stencil, the words appear
present the paper only where the stencil is absent. While the viewer may assume that the words are
formed due to their purposeful placement on the canvas, in actuality they only take shape through
absence. In rendering the words in this manner, Johns ensnares the viewer in a particular assumption,
setting the stage for a work littered with such traps.
While the use of a stencil depicts a practical embodiment of the opposition between presence
and absence, the function of the words reveals a more theoretical deception. The idea that device
circle is related to the circle above it, or even to the visual content to the work itself, is only assumed
due to the human desire to simulate a structured relationship between the two. There is no true
evidence suggesting that the words are not the caption, however there is equally limited evidence
suggesting that they are the caption because they are in no real relationship with the circular image.
The image in the work may in fact embody what the viewer may think of as a device that is a circle, but
the image is in no way truly related to the letters spelling the phrase device circle. The words refute
their relationship to the object in pictorial space above them because the relationship between the two is
not nonexistent and the misinterpreted presence of a structured relationship is assumed due to the

absence of anything that would suggest otherwise. For instance, if the object depicted above the words
device circle was a square, it is unlikely that the viewer would assume a relationship between the
two. The geometric shape of the square would refute the possibility of a relationship between the
words and the shape. Therefore, in the case of Device Circle, due to the absence of evidence
suggesting the relationship of the object to the words is arbitrary, for instance if the circle was a square,
then the perceived relationship between the words and the shape is perceived as present.
At this juncture, it may appear to be a bit overcomplicating to claim that no assertive
relationship of meaning exists in this work. However, in viewing another work by Johns, it is
increasingly clear that his paintings are plagued with traps ensnaring the viewer in the assumption of
falsely structured relationships between visual and linguistic signifiers. Such deceptions were the
fundamental basis of his paintings. For example, let us examine Johnss 1962 work, False Start (fig.
6). This painting features a myriad of brightly colored brushstrokes with the names of colors stenciled
within the canvas haphazardly. Most of the names of the colors are not written in the color they are
assumed to describe, calling attention to the idea that the actual hue of a color is unrelated to the word
perceived to indicate that color. However, there are several instances that differ, when, for example, the
word blue is depicted in the color recognized as blue. Johns depicts the vast majority of the words in
a different color than that which they are said to describe, calling immediate and somewhat obvious
attention to the untruthful nature of the words. By then highlighting certain instances when the
meaning does in fact mirror the perceived meaning of the word itself, as in his depiction of the word
blue, Johns coyly temps the viewer into believing for a moment that words can truthfully equate to
their meaning, only to realize later that the entire work was a device to show the fractured functions of
language. While the color blue is as equally separate from the word blue as the color yellow is from
the word red, the viewer subconsciously interprets that the former relationship is somehow more
truthful than the latter. Johns parades the temptation of perceived linguistic structures in order to
forcefully highlight the arbitrary relationship between linguistic and visual signs. Similarly, his 1962

Device Circle uses the word circle in order to shrewdly temp the viewer into relating it directly to the
depiction of the circular form above it, when in actuality the words device circle are no more related
to the circle above it that they would be to a square.
A semiotic reading of Johnss Device Circle is able to view this work with respect to its
complex system of fractured meanings, but the assumption of an affirmative relationship between
words and images tends to disregard the arbitrariness upon which semiotics is predicated. While
Cooper at first identifies Johnss interest in the discrepancies between linguistic and visual signs, he
later abandons this recognition when it no longer corroborates his argument. Yet perhaps this
discontinuation of methodology is purposeful. If one continues a purely semiotic discussion of this
work, destroying the affirmative structure that Cooper describes and deconstructing the complex
relationships at work in this painting, what then are we left with? I admit that at this juncture the
meaning able to be found in Device Circle is limited at best. Though the discussion of Magritte and
Foucault are somewhat ill-suited to his argument, Coopers possible recognition of the regressive
nature of this semiotic reading may have led him to advocate for the structured relationship between the
words device circle and the object in the painting. Otherwise, the meaning of the work becomes
something entirely dismantled, floating pieces adrift and estranged from one another.
Yet the potentially regressive nature of a semiotic reading of Johns offers the possibility of a
method involving social history. This method has been explored by Thomas Crow, particularly in his
essay appearing in the catalogue of the Los Angeles County Museums 2002 exhibition entitled,
Jasper Johns to Jeff Koons: Four Decades of Art from the Broad Collection. In this text Crow
outlines Johnss uniquely situated presence in American post-war scene following his induction into the
New York art world after his first one-man show.xxii In 1958, only a year before the production of
Device Circle, Johns was in the midst of his entrance to postmodern art. When Leo Castelli
commissioned Johnss show, he had actually been visiting the studio of Robert Rauschenberg, whose
work then became secondary to that of Johns after the latter had gained the attention of Castelli. After

the exhibition given to him by Castelli in 1958, Alfred Barr bought four of Johnss paintings to hang in
the Museum of Modern Art. These paintings, Green Target, Target with Four Faces, White Numbers,
and Flag, each exuded the emblematic and unexpressive quality for which Johnss work became so
recognizable. After this exhibition, which Crow claims undoubtedly marked Johnss entrance to the
forefront of postmodern art, Johns situated himself between the habitual patterns of American and
European art forms of the time, embodying specific aspects of pop imagery through his use of
emblematic symbols and yet displaying the European sophistication of the period through undoubtedly
self-conscious works. The provocative yet static, emblematic yet unmatched, early works of Johns
employ what Crow calls his effect of silence.xxiii
Though at times his argument is overwhelmed by social evidence and biographical context, perhaps
this final claim of Crows essay is a potential solution to the problematic nature of a semiotic reading of
Johnss work. Though he admittedly delves into possibly extraneous detail at times, Crow ultimately
renders a compelling case in favor of the intricate bonds between the production of Johnss artwork and
the social conditions he was subject to primarily due to his recognition of the effect of silence. The
needlessness of several superfluous details in this essay is easy to forgive in light of the complexity of
this conclusive denotation of this particular function of Johnss work within the American social
sphere. Crow ultimately forges a path to the recognition of meaning that cannot be gained from a
merely semiotic perspective, because if one only looks within the painting at the disintegrated
pathways of meaning in a work such as Device Circle, then where does this leave the art historian?
What meaning can possibly be reconciled or gained from this work? The answer, in my opinion, lies in
Crows discussion of Johnss entrance to the social world of contemporary art that ultimately shaped
his signature-like effect of silencexxiv and appears to reconcile the elusiveness of meaning that is a
product of a purely semiotic reading.
Crow particularly explains Johnss 1955 White Flag (fig. 7) as an embodiment of the silent
effect through its magisterial assurance and lack of personal reference.xxv Crow argues that the use
of the American flag separated Johns from the European artistic sphere in this period in addition to
offering a vehicle for which to disregard the symbolic power of an emblem. The use of the symbol
does not appropriate the perceived meaning of the symbol, but claims one entirely different when
presented to the post-war American public, in the face of the post-war European public, and
represented through art rather than its original form.xxvi In removing the American flag from each
sphere of meaning, it hangs in a whitewashed museum utterly silent. It signifies Johnss resolute
separation of his work from that of Twombly, Rauschenberg, various European artists, and the

American public, not through the emotive expression of his personal being, but through its opposite, an
effect of silence.xxvii He embalms the presence of the flag so as to separate it from everything for
which it previously offered the world in the realm of meaning. It is the corpse of meaning. No longer
in reference to anything but itself, Crow describes White Flag as silent, with the knowledge that at
times silence is the most deafening of sounds. It is nothing and everything. Due the projection of
Johnss work in this period, in addition to the ambitions of earliest works such as White Flag, his
Device Circle of 1959 likely followed similar protocol. In the midst of creating his earlier 1958 works
purchased by Barr, which sought to instigate the death of the emblems and eradicate the structure of
meaning initiated by symbolic forms, it is difficult to imagine that Johns then created Device Circle as a
captioned image predicated on structured meaning within the same year. It is more likely that Device
Circle adhered to similar aims of the four paintings accessioned by MoMA and the ambitions of Johns
in this period, embodying an embalmed remnant of prescribed meaning and simultaneously exposing
the problematic nature of structured relationships between words and images. In fact, Device Circle, in
following in the legacy of works such as White Flag, need not be interpreted to have the ability to
describe any particular meaning. Device Circle is silent primarily due to the fact that through its
fragmented structures of meaning it does not represent a useful thing at all but a preserved remnant of a
broken device. Its brokenness, perpetual existence, and unnerving silence, prescribed by its inability to
portray structural meaning, is in itself deafening.
Because the work of Jasper Johns is often viewed as unexpressive, it is simply too easy to assume the
meaning of his paintings and subsequently to discuss them from a variety of perspectives. Yet some
methods are better able to explicate the intricate complexities of specific works. In particular, a
semiotic approach encourages the acknowledgement of Johnss purpose in utilizing words and visual
symbols in his works, as they seek to undermine the assumed notions of structural meaning. However,
this recognition produces only a collection of fragmented meanings unable to be reconciled if not
viewed within the context of the social conditions and historical moment of the artist at the time of its

production. Johnss work, while unexpressive on a personal level, challenges the ways in which
meaning is perceived through both language and images, all within the complex societal forces of the
post-war United States, and allows the viewer to recognize what a work like Device Circle truly is: a
broken device presented embalmed and silent.

i Roberta Bernstein. Inspiration and Innovation: The Art of Jasper Johns, MoMA, 1996, pp. 2-6.
ii Ibid,p.4.
iii Ibid
iv Ibid
v Ibid
vi LeoSteinberg. Jasper Johns: The First Seven Years of His Art, Other Criteria, Oxford University Press, 1972, pp. 1755.

vii Harry Cooper. Speak, Painting: Word and Device in Early Johns, October, Winter 2009, pp. 49-76.
viii Ibid.p.52
ix Ibid
x Ibid,p.53
xi Ibid,p.52
xii Ibid,p.53
xiii Ibid
xiv Ibid
xv Ibid
xvi Ibid,p.55
xvii Ibid,p.58
xviii Ibid
xix Ibid,p.59
xx Ibid,p.58
xxi Steinberg,JasperJohns:TheFirstSevenYearsofHisArt,p.32
xxii Thomas Crow. Southern Boys Go to Europe, Jasper Johns to Jeff Koons: Four Decades of Art from the Broad
Collections, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Harry N. Abrams Inc, 2001, pp. 44-68.
xxiii Ibid,p.58
xxiv Ibid

Works Cited
Bernstein, Roberta. Inspiration and Innovation: The Art of Jasper Johns, MoMA, 1996, pp. 2-6.
Cooper, Harry. Speak, Painting: Word and Device in Early Johns, October, Winter 2009, pp. 49-76.
Crow, Thomas. Southern Boys Go to Europe, Jasper Johns to Jeff Koons: Four Decades of Art from the Broad
Collections, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Harry N. Abrams Inc, 2001, pp. 44-68.
Steinberg, Leo. Jasper Johns: The First Seven Years of His Art, Other Criteria, Oxford University Press,
1972, pp. 17-55.

Images
Fig.1,DeviceCircle,JasperJohns,1959,AndrewandDeniseSaul

Fig.2,TheBabyDrinkingtheMothersMilkfromtheBreast,ScientificAmerica,1952
Fig.3,WomaninStrawHat,PabloPicasso,1936
Fig.4,Untitled,JasperJohns,1986
Fig.5,untitledpaintinginencaustic,JasperJohns,19911992
Fig.6,FalseStart,JasperJohns,privatecollection1959

xxv
xxvi
xxvii