The relationship betwixt Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns was one of the greatest honey stories in modern art. A fourth dimension of intense emotional involvement, together they plotted the downfall of Abstract Expressionism in their grubby paint strewn apartments in downtown New York. In the 1950s, during the half dozen years they were together, practically everything they produced was a masterpiece—just recollect of Rauschenberg'southward eclectic Combines and Johns' Flags and Targets. Works radiant with newness, that gave the first whispered hints of the surprises we had in wait from Contemporary Fine art.

Johns' staggering early years of accomplishment volition forever be centered around his relationship with Rauschenberg—a relationship that pervades his latest exhibition "Jasper Johns: Something Approaching Truth" at the Royal Academy in London. The first large-scale exhibition of his work in England for 40 years features more than than 150 works, representing the complete working career of the creative person. Even at 87, Johns is all the same hard at work at his home in Connecticut.

On the left Jasper Johns, Summer, 1985 and on the right Jasper Johns, 0 Through 9, 1960

What Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg achieved together was pure iconoclasm. They subverted the myth that all artists were visionaries by depicting banal, everyday objects. Simply had it non been for the older Rauschenberg, Johns would never have picked up a paintbrush permit alone be signed up by Leo Castelli, who at the time was the globe's biggest dealer. The story goes that in 1958 Castelli was visiting Rauschenberg to discuss a planned exhibition, but by a fortuitous turn of events found himself in Johns' apartment directly beneath. There he discovered a room full of paintings, "years of piece of work never before exhibited", Flags and Targets, an entirely new pictorial language that turned symbols into abstractions. Soon, of course, they would be turning Johns into America's most successful living artist.

Castelli signed Johns immediately and Rauschenberg's planned exhibition was instantly forgotten. In the years that followed Johns' career thrived, selling out his sensational first exhibition besides equally having three works snapped up by MoMA. But Rauschenberg'south career waned and for a fourth dimension, faltered. Past the beginning of the 1960s, their relationship was in tatters; their professional person, aesthetic and romantic conflicts utterly irreconcilable. The break up was bitter, and they didn't speak for years.

On the left Jasper Johns, Fool's House, 1961–62, Oil on canvas with broom and on the right Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg together at Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles, 1980

In stark contrast to the shy and retreating figure of Johns, who still rarely gives interviews, Rauschenberg was a pulsating, gregarious grapheme. Although their differing personas may have been incendiary in individual, they brought the best out of each other in the studio. Rauschenberg'south spontaneous, excited energy collided with the retreating intellectual and well-read Johns, whose dull deliberate mode made him, according to art critic Jonathan Katz, "obsessively repeat themes".

Moving round the Royal Academy exhibition, the standout work could only ever be Flag, 1958, hanging magnificently in its vivid and moving profundity. So exactly proportioned you lot could almost mistake information technology for an actual flag, until you come across the thick encaustic pigment layered with scraps of paper. Jasper Johns would revisit the idea 40 times, experimenting with colors and even once turning it into a screenprint. The piece of work raises silent unanswerable questions: is it a flag or a painting? Does it conjure upwardly national pride and liberty, or notions of imperialism and assailment?

Jasper Johns, Flag, 1958, Encaustic on canvas, Private collection

Although it may first appear to accept trivial in mutual with Rauschenberg'south piece of work at the time, Flag shares that aforementioned focus on cultural fragments, putting reality back into art and thrusting the relationship betwixt viewer and artwork into the limelight. The individualism of the Abstruse Expressionists, then dominant at the time, with their personal, testosterone-fueled, emotional tirades on canvas, were suddenly too self-involved—too dependent on the artist's ain psyche.

Robert Rauschenberg would, of course, afterward get one of the world's favorite artists, a career highpoint perhaps beingness his sensational triumph at the Venice Biennale in 1964. Only null could compare to their first early years of creation, when the 2 artists broke down the lines separating mass civilisation and art, paving the manner for Pop Art and irresolute Western Art history forever. Johns' artworks especially were seemingly sprinkled with angel dust, each painting reveling in self-confidence and disarming simplicity. Jasper Johns, Regrets, 2013, Oil on canvas

Which of course merely seems to describe attending to the impenetrable distance of some of his afterwards piece of work. What Alastair Sooke, writing for the Telegraph Paper, calls "baffling", as the artist shifts the same oblique images this way and that, "like counters on a tabletop." The stunning crosshatching works of the 1970s are in abundance, every bit are the pared-down and conceptual Ambit series which, along with other recent works such as Regrets, 2013, can at times experience off-limits to the viewer. Nevertheless, Johns remains unmatched at articulating the great and unfathomable mysteries of this world, and then abundantly revealed throughout this wonderful exhibition.

Jasper Johns: Something Resembling Truth can be viewed from the 23rd of September through to the 10th of December 2017.

By Duncan Ballantyne-Mode—Senior Editor