Mormon Kawara

A c. 1904-05 photo of Jasper Johns’s father seated on his father’s lap. His mother Evelina died in 1906, and Grandpa Johns remarried in 1911. The artist, who lived with these grandparents, used this picture in works beginning in 1994. While re-reading this post about Jasper Johns’s use of an old family photo in a series of prints in the 1990s, I thought I’d look up his grandparents on familysearch.org. It turns out the grandmother in the photo, Johns’s father’s mother, Evelina, died soon after the photo was taken. And so the grandparents Johns grew up with were his father’s father, William Johns, and William’s second wife, Montez McKee Bramlett. I’m sure all this is going to be in Deborah Solomon’s book. But what really surprised me was seeing Johns himself on familysearch–as deceased. Everyone with an account can see themselves at the base of their own family tree, but otherwise, living people are not included on the genealogy website. It seemed Johns had been added only in August,…