From Hand Painted Pop: American Art in TRansition 1955-1962

Famous Paintings seen and not looked at, not examined:
... Frank O'Hara, a poet on the musuems curatorial staff, worte in response to Barr's query (Barr being the director of MoMA, the query was about aquiring works from Johns from his first solo show) "Inceidentally, I was intrigued by the flag on orange field, which along with the all grey painting with drawer, seems to do sucha drastic reinterpeation of the Albers convention" (127)

...most critics have continued to see John's early paintings as a reaction against Abstract expesionisms;s subjectivity. These early critics defined Johns work as objectively literal, as well as decidely nono-metaphorical. In doing so so, they were connecting his work to their narrow formally biased reading of Piollocks, whioch was seen as the apothoesis of art for art;s sake. This patiociaul reading of J ohn;s wotrk, the one that has playtedthe most central role in subsquent r eadings of his wotrk, as well as art in gneral, feels narrow-minded in its focus, and ngeneous, not to say unvernursome, in its apprasia. It makes jkohsn as an artist who is more concenrnd with art histyory dan the right thing to do than with making art. It makes him intoa a figure who is concisous of the verigying process of art historians and critics t, rathern than an artisth was has always gone his own way. Finally, it makes Johns int a self concious artist who had the ciritics in mind when he painted his first flag. By establishing this realtopnmship, the cirtics were able to mainating a certain power, they were the audioence othe artist had in maind the please whe he or she began to paint. And it through this realtinonship, one that hs prevailed inthe art world in fone for or nother...for more then for ducedes, that citritcs and historicans were able to formulate a central or academic tradition which other insitutionsin the art world would help refine and maintain. (132)

ALthough Johns exists in various adhjacent and overlapping realms, it is not clear to him what connects him to them or them to each other. To discouver these links, Johns decided that his materials...should dictate how they were to be synthised, the final form they would take. Johns practive is one of theintervention, he connects one thing to another because he has discoved an inextricalb link between them, This internvention shows hm something about what he is. More than a regfuation of subjectivity, Johns definiton of art refects both subjectivty and objectivity, both interior, personal impulses and exterior, predtermined, objective standards, For him, personal impulses are a false sign of freedom, while a piori objective standards are concerned wtih conformity and consesus opinon rather then truth...
140

From Not Nessc. Pop: Cy Twombly and Americ Linda Norden

As the story of the decades (50s) art gets told, in reivisopn after recision, the route from abstract expressisons to Pop seems to remain fixed. Even as the focus shifts from the contrubtyions of indivdiaul artists to the contet of media, publicity, process. and reception, the concusion always seems foregone,:betwetten the early fifiteis and early sixities, American art--or the prevailing notion of what consituted American art--moved from the excluding, high art domain of expressive gesture, to the popular arena of commerical imagtery and icons. Buy any stoy that ends only by equating American culture with mass cultureis itself an excluding story, and one that ironically fails to account for the messiness of the masses. (148)

From Modes of Disclosure: The construction of Gay IDentity and the Rise of Pop Art

...Painting with Two Balls both embracevs and betrays Abstract Expressionsim: the hatched brushstroke, brilliant of hue, contes the pleasure that Johns takes in the painterly abandon of ACtion Painters like Pollock, de Kooning, and Clufford STill, the tripartite horizaontal division recalls the reclinarty that ordered the free play of plaint in the work of artists like Mark Rothko and Barneyy Newman. But of coursei n an early owrk by JKohns, even the semmingly most spontaneous handling is a feint, these are not traces of impetousity, but its represenation--the stokes are always smaller, shorter and more controlled than those of his predecssors, and the various colouristic campigns are more venly distirubuted over the canvas. The use of encaustic here and in so many other works of this persoid serves to mimmiy what had been signs for vitiality in wthat we sense oruslves disntancef forom both the work as a record of activity, and one might add, from the artists whose activity is recorded...(148)


(obv not spellechecked)