Jasper Johns: Copy/Trace

Discover a defining through line across Jasper Johns’s influential career through his methods of replication and revision in Jasper Johns: Copy/Trace.

Among the most prominent and inventive American artists of the past century, Jasper Johns first gained renown for his use of common objects, repeated motifs, and found imagery. Over seven decades, Johns has shaped and transcended art movements including pop art, minimalism, and conceptual art—and his work continues to surprise, delight, and expand the definition of what art can be.

Jasper Johns: Copy/Trace offers a fresh perspective on the artist’s celebrated career by focusing on the processes of copying and tracing that recur throughout his work. Whether by copying one of his own paintings, leaving an imprint of the body, or tracing an existing image through a translucent support, Johns has repeatedly returned to these methods of representation across a wide range of media. Published on the occasion of an exhibition curated by Jeffrey Weiss at David Zwirner, New York in 2026, this book features drawings and prints from the 1960s through the 2010s that highlight the complex implications of Johns’s seemingly straightforward operations. A new essay by Weiss illuminates this significant through line in the artist’s practice and reveals how meaning and making are inseparable in his work.