American artist Jasper Johns was BOTD in 1930. Born in Augusta, Georgia and raised in South Carolina, he studied briefly at the University of South Carolina, moving to New York in 1948 to pursue a career as an artist. After two years service in the US Army, he met fellow painter Robert Rauschenberg in 1954, who became his life partner and artistic collaborator. They became friends and collaborators with another creative power couple, choreographer Merce Cunningham and composer John Cage. Together, they formed a quieter and queer alternative to the aggressive heterosexuality of his contemporaries Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Johns is best known for his Flag paintings, finely textured representations of the American Flag made using coloured hot wax, oil paint, and newsprint collage. First exhibited in 1958, the series created a sensation, providing the first significant challenge to the dominance of Abstract Expressionism. He extended his conceptual approach to other everyday objects (targets, maps, numbers, letters of the alphabet, and beer cans), simultaneously elevating them to iconic works of art and draining them of their cultural and emotional associations. His work was a major inspiration for the emerging Pop Art movement, notably the work of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Now one of America’s most revered artists, his work is displayed in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 2011, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honour. Johns and Rauschenberg lived together until the latter’s death in 2008. Johns currently lives and works in a 170 acre property Sharon, Connecticut, which will be converted into an artists’ residency after his death.