Target

"Target" is one of the most iconic paintings in postwar American art, a 1961 encaustic and newspaper on canvas that established Jasper Johns's reputation as the intellectual heir to Abstract Expressionism while simultaneously questioning everything that movement had taken for granted. The image is unmistakable: concentric circles of red, yellow, and blue surrounding a central bull's-eye, the familiar target symbol rendered at monumental scale (167.6 cm square) and with a physical thickness that makes the canvas feel almost sculptural. Johns chose the target because it was "already made," a pre-existing image from the world of games and sports that required no invention on his part. This strategy of appropriating found imagery—later labeled "readymade" in homage to Duchamp—became foundational for Pop Art and Minimalism, though Johns himself resisted such classifications. The encaustic technique—pigment suspended in hot wax—creates a tactile, layered surface that records the artist's process in visible ridges and drips, asserting handmade presence despite the mechanical simplicity of the image. Embedded fragments of newspaper beneath the wax add another layer of meaning: the printed word intruding upon pure abstraction, the public sphere penetrating the hermetic space of art. Art historians have read the target as a metaphor for looking itself, for the way the eye is drawn to a center that offers nothing but the command to aim. The painting also influenced the development of Minimalism: Donald Judd and Dan Flavin both cited Johns's targets as proof that art could be both literal and complex, both object and image.

This encaustic target became foundational for Pop Art and Minimalism by appropriating a pre-existing symbol, embedding newspaper fragments in wax to make looking itself the subject of monumental painting.

It matters because Johns painted a target and asked everyone to stare at the center—proving that the simplest image could become the most complicated question about what art is for.