Jasper Johns’ P ain ted B ronze
55
1973 for $90,000, almost a hundred times the purchase priced
With the enormous profits generated by the work, it was considered ironic
that Johns lived and worked in the old Provident Loan Society Building on Houston
and Essex streets in New York during the late 1960s and early 1970s and that he
kept his art in the old vault of the renovated bank. Upon turning down an offer,
Johns once observed, ‘'1 always wanted to sell a painting for a million dollars”
(qtd. in Johnston 27). Such statements, coupled with his actions, suggest that Johns
believed the prices for his work could be manipulated by reducing output and
limiting the sale of existing items. In 1954, at the age of 24, Johns destroyed all of
the art in his possession (Mamiya 12). By 1960, Emily and Burton Tremaine,
Frederick Weisman, Ben Heller, and Robert Scull were all fighting over paintings.
These collectors even began to negotiate with the artist for paintings before he had
even started them (Tomkins 62). In a similar vein Johns became an astute collector
of his own work and once Painted Bronze was sold, he created a duplicate for
himself (Feinstein 139).
From the very beginning of his career Johns was not averse to employing
techniques from commercial marketing to promote his art. While collaborating
with Robert Rauschenberg under the single pseudonym Matson Jones, Johns created
window displays for Tiffany’s and Bonwit Teller that were sometimes used to sell
his art (Mamiya 134-36). Gene Moore, display director for Bonwit Teller and
Tiffany’s, paid the artists $500 for each window display they designed. In one
window, the display resembled a tableau typical of Dutch still life painting while
another employed a stand of cut and uncut trees as pedestals for jewelryL Johns’
paintings Flag on Orange Field (figure 2) and Small White Flag were exhibited
for sale much like other consumer goods in the windows at Bonwit Teller during
1957-58 (Crichton 36).
Within the context of the more traditional art market, Johns’ stellar record
of selling nearly all the paintings in his first gallery exhibit established his
prominence in the art world and allowed him to take center stage. Similarly, Time
Magazine in 1959 equated Johns’ cachet with the acceptance of his work and the
sale of his paintings at national and international exhibits:
Jasper Johns, 29, is the brand-new darling of the art world’s
bright, brittle avant-garde. A year ago he was in Manhattan, he
has exhibited in Paris and Milan, was the only American to
win a painting prize at Carn Vv