Michael Ovitz’s White Flag by Jasper Johns is considered the centerpiece of his substantial collection, one that includes works by Ellsworth Kelly, Pablo Picasso, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and others.  Johns’s White Flag is significant because it was one of the first to break from Abstract Expressionism, the then-dominant style of painting and usher in new experiments in Pop Art and other forms of modern art.

“It’s one thing to look at reproductions, but when you see the painting in the flesh, with its heavily worked encaustic surface, it’s amazing,” Ovitz says.

Ovitz’s interest in Jasper Johns specifically stems to his lifelong friendship with Michael Crichton, who passed away in 2008.  Ovitz was Crichton’s agent for over 30 years. Crichton, famous for his scientific thrillers such as The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park, and for creating the television series ER, was also acknowledged as a leading authority on Jasper Johns as well as an important collector of 20th Century art.

“We both owned several works of Jasper over the years from different periods and always spoke of the dream of owning a Flag,” says Ovitz.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art desribes the work:  “White Flag’s lush reticence perfectly exemplifies Jasper John’s early style. The fast-setting medium of encaustic enabled the artist to make each brushstroke distinct, while the forty-eight-star flag design—contiguous with the perimeters of the canvas—provided a structure for the richly varied surface, which ranges from translucent to opaque. White Flag is painted on three separately stretched panels of cotton: the star area, the seven upper stripes to the right of the stars, and the longer stripes below. Johns worked on each panel separately. After applying a ground of unbleached beeswax, he built up the stars, the negative areas around them, and the stripes with applications of collage: cut or torn pieces of newsprint, other papers, and bits of fabric. He dipped these into molten beeswax and adhered them to the surface. He then joined the three panels and overpainted them with more beeswax mixed with pigments, adding touches of white oil.”

Ovitz bought his highly textured “White Flag,” 1955-58, at Christie’s in 1988 for about $7 million.

Read more about Michael Ovitz’s White Flag in this L.A. Times article, Michael Ovitz on Michael Crichton, and the Jasper Johns flags of their dreams.