Once asked about his use of numerals as subjects for painting, Johns replied, “They seemed to me preformed,
conventional, depersonalized, factual, exterior elements.” That is, they freed Johns from any obligation to construct a pictorial narrative or express his interior life. Despite the ease with which we recognize the number 4, Johns plays with its meaning in the title: the word figure winks at the tradition of “figural” (or representational) painting, and the number 4 sounds like the word for, leaving the title entirely open-ended, like an unfinished sentence. Meanwhile the monumental 4 of the painting itself is almost lost amid the lively patchwork of brushstrokes.