Rauschenberg went to get ice for Castelli from the refrigerator he shared with Johns in Johns’ studio, and, shortly thereafter, the young artist and new art dealer were introduced. They would meet, by chance, the next day on March 8 th, when Castelli went to Rauschenberg’s studio to look at his work. Leo Castelli had seen that work at the exhibition preview and was impressed. Indeed, a green Target was the first painting he ever exhibited ( Green Target, 1955, New York, Museum of Modern Art) at the Jewish Museum in 1957 ( Artists of the New York School: Second Generation, – ). Innovations in other media, such as ‘sculpmetal’, were first experimented with using the Target paradigm. Targets were an extremely important motif in Johns’ early visual vocabulary.

This early, rare painting must therefore be seen as one of the prototypes of Johns’ art and creative vision – made at a time when he had not yet exhibited a painting (only a drawing, Flag, 1955, Collection of the artist, at the Poindexter Gallery, New York, – ).

It is one of the earliest Targets he ever made created at a germinal moment of Johns’ own biography and, indeed, of American twentieth-century art history. Green Target was completed in early 1956 at Jasper Johns’ studio, below Robert Rauschenberg’s, at 278 Pearl Street, New York.

Jasper johns target