Jasper Johns emerged as a notable artist in the 1950s in the wake of the intensely personal, gestural painting of the abstract expressionists. He was credited for presenting recognizable objects in a cool, seemingly detached, and often enigmatic manner. Johns almost always selected the raw material of his art from preexisting images, or what he called “things the mind already knows.” Early in his career, he chose widely familiar motifs, such as numerals or shapes derived from commercial stencils, targets, American flags, and maps of the United States. The tactile quality of his surfaces in works such as this one stands out and testifies to the close relationship Johns perceived between painting and sculpture.