His use of discarded readymade objects and pop culture imagery linked his works to topical events in everyday America. The silkscreen paintings of 1962–64 combined expressive brushwork with silkscreened journal clippings from Life, Newsweek, and National Geographic. Johns’ work of flags, targets, numbers, and maps of the U.S. Art Galery as nicely three-dimensional depictions of ale cans drew attention to questions of representation in art. Johns’ and Rauschenberg’s work of the Fifties is frequently referred to as Neo-Dada, and is visually distinct from the prototypical American pop art which exploded within the early Sixties.
