Read Castelli's essay to get a sense of the renowned and perspicacious Leo Castelli, rather than for what it tells you about Johns. For that, there are hundreds of other sources. One startlingly thoughtful analysis of Johns's work appears in James Fenton's book Leonardo's Nephew. Castelli reveals that MoMA's Tom Hess had "a friend" buy one of Johns's early American flag paintings for the museum in order to bypass a conservative acquisitions committee. Fenton tells us it was the architect Philip Johnson, and that it then took 15 years for MoMA to wrest it from Johnson's appreciative grasp. --Peggy Moorman
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