With the advent of op art, somebody was sure to paint something not really there. And now Jasper Johns has done it, by painting a U.S. flag (reproduced on the opposite page) that appears only on the eye's retina. High school students of science know the trick: colors produce afterimages of their complements. Hence orange conjures up blue; green induces red.
In fact, Johns first got the idea eight years ago from a book on color photography. He tried it out in a collage, but the results were "awful." Then on a...
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