Flag

1951–1953

Drafted into the army during the Korean War

In 1951 his studies were interrupted when he was drafted into the army during the Korean War. He served for two years, first at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and then in Sendai, Japan.

summer 1953

Meets Robert Rauschenberg

Returning to New York in the summer of 1953, Johns worked at Marboro Books and met Sari Dienes, Rachel Rosenthal and Robert Rauschenberg, five years his senior, with whom he began a romantic and artistic relationship that lasted until 1961. In the same period he was strongly influenced by the choreographer Merce Cunningham and his partner, the composer John Cage.

1954

Destroys his earlier work: flags, targets, numbers

In 1954 Johns destroyed all of his previous artwork still in his possession and began painting flags, maps, targets, letters and numbers, “things the mind already knows”. Unlike the gestural abstraction of the Abstract Expressionists, these paintings could be read as both representational and abstract.

1957

A studio at Coenties Slip among fellow artists

In 1957 Johns lived in former shipping lofts on Lower Manhattan's waterfront around Coenties Slip that had been taken over by artists, alongside Rauschenberg, Robert Indiana and Ellsworth Kelly; the community also housed Agnes Martin for a time.

March 1957

Leo Castelli discovers Johns

In March 1957, while visiting Rauschenberg's studio, the dealer Leo Castelli asked to see Johns's art: on the floor below he found “a fantastic display of flags and targets” and immediately offered Johns an exhibition. According to other accounts, Castelli discovered Johns in 1958.