Wowee!

"One night I dreamed that I painted a large American flag, and the next morning I got up and I went out and bought the materials to begin it."

That's what Jasper Johns said about the development of his painting Flag, of 1954–55.










In 1958 he made Three Flags, and this is the envelope on which he first sketched his idea. It looks like it spent a lot of time in Johns's studio before it was acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art (it was a fiftieth-anniversary gift, so maybe in 1981?), where Greg is a paper preparator. He found it in the racks and took this picture!