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As the German army swept across Europe in 1939 to 1941, and as Japanese forces conquered the Pacific, the United States remained wary of being drawn into another tragic and costly overseas war. Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December 1941 ended the uncertainty; the country became unified behind President Roosevelt’s ensuing declaration of war. The first several...

In 1959, Jasper Johns bought a cheap, spring-loaded window shade and affixed it to a large canvas. After pulling the paper down and tacking it in place, he painted the whole object—in stony black, gray, and white—with his newfound vocabulary of jagged starbursts, broad horizontals, and...