It took me a while to understand the work of Jasper Johns. Now he is one of my favorite artists.
He has big retrospective of 70 years of art making both in New York and Philadelphia.
Here is a quote from a New York times article by M.H. Miller that summarizes Johns accomplishments.
"Johns has assiduously avoided his public throughout his career, and yet he has also managed to consistently speak to what it is to be alive in America at any given moment. He is the rare artist whose work has never become stale, who in his 80s is still creating strange and mysterious images that could be looked at endlessly and never fully reveal themselves. Whether Johns is actually about anything (or nothing) in particular has been the central question of his work, and yet it is ultimately less important than his endless search for meaning itself — the mere act of the lone artist entering the studio every day and deciding to continue. His constant presence is defined mostly by self-erasure, which has made him an artist who has disappeared almost entirely into his work. There is a sense that he’s been here forever, and that no one will replace him once he’s gone".
This video talks about the Mind/Mirror exhibit that is going on as we speak in New York or Philadelphia .
https://whitney.org/exhibitions/jasper-johns