Who is Jasper Johns? Born in Augusta, Georgia in 1930, Jasper Johns grew up in Allendale, South Carolina. He was the only child of William Jasper Johns and Jeannette Riley Johns. He studied at the University of South Carolina for three semesters before moved Parson School of Design.
Drafted into US Army in 1951, he started an art exhibition program for soldier at Fort Jackson, S.C. Together with Robert Rauschenberg, Johns is widely acknowledged as one of the most important American painters in the postwar era.
Beginning in 1959 his paintings included more painterly gestures as in False Start and Highway. In 1960 John’s dealer, Leo Castelli, had sold False Start for $3,150 to collector Robert Scull, who had made his money in the taxicab business.
He then sold False Start in the six figure range to François de Menil, the son of John and Dominique de Menil, heirs to the Schlumberger oil fortune. Castelli figured giving the booming market that the painting might sell for as much as $10 million, although had been estimated to fetch only $8 million tom $9 million.
SI Newhouse bought Jasper John’s painting False Start for $17 million in 1988, at the top of an overhead art market.
In early 1990s, at the bottom of the market, SI Newhouse started to sell what Castelli calls “some very good paintings.”
In Oct 12, 2006, the painting was sold to the Kenneth C. Griffin, for $80 million, making it the most expensive painting by a living artist.
False Start features sketchy bursts of vibrant colors with the names of the colors stenciled on them with contrasting hues. The naming of colors with differently colored, stenciled lettering seems to criticize abstract expressionism.
False Start by Jasper Johns
