After serving in the Korean War (1952–53), Johns returned to New York, where he met artists like Marcel Duchamp and Robert Rauschenberg, as well as musician John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham. Johns’ artistic trajectory was always intent on creating new images based, as he said, on “things the mind already knows.”

Johns often resorts to familiar, pre-existing objects such as flags, targets, maps or numbers, which can be reproduced on flat surfaces without using perspective or other optical illusion processes. The twodimensionality of the represented objects contrasts with the powerful material presence of the encaustic painting technique (a method used in Roman mural painting since Classical Antiquity) in which a pigment is mixed into hot wax to create highly resistant surfaces.