In creating “Flag,” his groundbreaking and best-known work, Jasper Johns used furniture paint, newspaper collage, and a wax encaustic technique used by ancient Egyptian painters to create images derived from real shapes and objects. Separating an object from its symbolic connotations, Johns uses strong, graphic shapes depicting popular icons such as flags, targets, letters, numbers and maps. Johns became a forerunner of the Minimal and Conceptual movements, as well as Pop Art, producing intaglio prints, sculptures and lithographs with similar motifs.

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