Target with Four Faces [working proof]
1979
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
color etching with aquatint, drypoint, spit bite, sugar lift, and ink on wove paper [working proof]
Dimensions
sheet: 65.8 × 49.7 cm (25 7/8 × 19 9/16 in.) plate: 59.7 × 46.8 cm (23 1/2 × 18 7/16 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Patrons' Permanent Fund and Special Friends of the National Gallery of Art
Accession Number
2008.136.388
Art Historical Context
Jasper Johns, a pivotal figure in American postwar art, revisits his iconic "target" motif in this 1979 working proof titled *Target with Faces*. Emerging from the Pop Art and Neo-Dada of the 1950s and '60s, Johns elevated everyday symbols—like flags and targets—into profound meditations on perception, memory, and the boundary between art and object. Created nearly three decades after his groundbreaking *Target* paintings, this demonstrates his enduring fascination with repetition and variation, now infused with human faces that add layers of psychological intrigue. Printed in color etching w...
About the Artist
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930) is an American painter, sculptor, draftsman, and printmaker whose revolutionary work fundamentally transformed the trajectory of postwar American art. Emerging in the 1950s when Abstract Expressionism dominated the New York art world, Johns introduced a radically different approach by painting familiar, everyday symbols—flags, targets, numbers, and maps—that he des...