It was in Sharon that one friend, the art dealer Francis Naumann, first met Johns’s longtime studio assistant James Meyer. He only occasionally allows visitors the few assistants he’s employed are meant to recede into the background, there but not there. There is no Jeff Koons–like army of implementers doing his bidding and no Andy Warhol–like Factory of hangers-on in the corners, watching it all happen. Johns’s primary studio - a large, fully renovated old barn on the grounds of his 130-acre estate in Sharon, Connecticut - is a reflection of his personality. The work comes first, and they work alone. Another friend compares him to fellow introverts like Philip Roth and Philip Glass: superficially polite yet diffident-and, at moments, abrupt and even biting. Those who still see him say Johns, now 84, can be a brilliant, charming presence, but also by turns slightly cool and prickly - the counterweight, in temperament, of his vivacious late friend and partner Robert Rauschenberg. “He’s spent his whole life cultivating a certain air of mystery,” says David Ross, a friend of the artist and the former director of the Whitney. Martin with a circle of friends who are protective of him and guarded on his behalf.
In his half-century as one of the universally sanctified titans of modern art, Jasper Johns has led a private life, if not a reclusive one, shuttling between his homes in Connecticut and St. Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY An untitled Jasper Johns drawing that is part of a civil suit against Johns’s former assistant James Meyer.
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