Star Profile Jasper Johns, artist
Jasper Johns attended A. C. Moore Elementary School, the University of South Carolina, and served at Fort Jackson.
By John Temple Ligon

A record was set for South Carolina and for the world last week. A painting by a South Carolina artist, Jasper Johns, sold for the highest price paid for a work by a living artist. Chicago hedge-fund manager Kenneth C. Griffin and his wife, Anne, paid $80 million to buy Johns's False Start from Los Angeles media mogul David Geffen. False Start was painted by Johns in his 128 Front Street studio in lower Manhattan in 1959.

In its May 4, 1959 issue, Time magazine declared, "Jasper Johns, 29, is the brand-new darling of the art world's bright, brittle avant-garde. A year ago he was practically unknown; since then he has had a sellout show in Manhattan, has exhibited in Paris and Milan, was the only American to win a painting prize at the Carnegie International, and has seen three of his paintings bought for Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art."

A 1988 sale of False Start also set a world's record price for a living artist. S. I. Newhouse of Conde Nast Publications paid $17.1 million for the same painting. Newhouse sold the painting to Geffen in the early 1990s for an undisclosed amount.

Above: 1959-False Start is in the background.

Geffen, it is rumored in media circles, is set on buying The Los Angeles Times . Otherwise, selling a painting by a living artist in his 76th year makes little sense. The art world has its crass commercial side, too, just like any business. One of the crassest is to anticipate gains immediately upon the departure of the artist.

Johns began in Allendale, South Carolina, in 1930. Actually, he was born in Augusta, where they had the only decent hospital in the area. His father pulled out of the family when Johns was three, and Johns's paternal grandfather took care of him. In the late spring of 1939, Johns's grandfather died in Allendale at age 71.

Johns moved to Columbia in the summer of 1939 to be with his mother and his stepfather. He attended A. C. Moore Elementary School that fall and spring. The following summer, 1940, Johns moved in with his aunt Gladys Johns Shealy near Batesburg--Leesville, where she taught all grades in a two-room school.

Below: 1988-Johns led the Venice Biennale.

For his senior year in high school, Johns moved to Sumter and enrolled in Edmunds High School.

In June 1947, Johns graduated from Edmunds High School as valedictorian. In September, he began classes at USC and studied under Edmund Yaghjian, Augusta Rembert, Wittkowsky Walsh, and Catharine Phillips Rembert.

At the urging of his professors, Johns left USC for New York City to study art. He soon ran out of money and had to drop out of school.

He was drafted by the Army and stationed at Ft. Jackson. In 1951-52, Johns developed an art exhibition program for his fellow soldiers. The Columbia Museum of Art provided space for the soldiers' gallery.

Out of the Army after two years of struggle in New York City, Johns painted White Flag and Flag, the latter in red, white, and blue. In 1958, he was invited to exhibit his work in his first one-man show. The Museum of Modern Art bought three paintings for its permanent collection, and architect Philip Johnson bought Flag as a gift for the museum.

Since then Johns has been considered America's most important artist of the 20th Century and his Flag the most important painting.

Historically and aesthetically, Flag is well above False Start and its $80 million sale price.