Johns’ image has some striking resemblances to a photograph of the January 1968 crash site of a United States Air Force B-52 Stratofortress. The crash occurred 7.5 miles west of Thule Air Base, Greenland while the B-52 bomber aircraft was on a Cold War alert mission over Baffin Bay. Alert missions were a Cold War deterrent against Soviet attack and involved B-52 bombers with nuclear payloads in the air for 24 hours a day. Johns may have seen a photograph of the crash site and used it as a basis for his image.

In Figure 1, part of a sheet of newspaper from the Washington Post circa 1968 has been incorporated into the lithograph. Most of the page from the newspaper has been overinked; however, the full text of an article entitled The Recall to Reality by Joseph Alsop (reprinted in The Watertown Daily Times, Friday August 2, 1968) is visible, just to the left of the figure. Alsop’s article suggests that the military might of America needed to be vigorously maintained to serve as a bulwark against the spread of the Soviet empire. He vilifies the aggressive stance taken by the Soviet-controlled Eastern Bloc and warns of the potential for nuclear catastrophe.

The visual references to a rocket launch and inter-continental ballistic missile are clearly suggested by Figure 1. The imagery symbolizes the Cold War reality of military aggression, the space race and the fear of communism by overtly framing Cold War anxiety in terms of a nuclear catastrophe.

As for Johns’ legacy, in 2009, some forty years after the creation of Figure 1, a signed and numbered lithograph from this edition sold for $18,750 at a Sotheby’s New York sale, including buyer’s premium.

Since 1987 only six images from the 1969 edition have came up for auction and prices have remained relatively constant at around $18,000.

The first online recorded sale on the secondary market occurred at Sotheby’s New York in 1990, just a few months after the Berlin Wall came down, soon after Ronald Reagan’s admonition to the Soviet Union to "tear down this wall"; thus in a very real sense proclaiming the official end to the Cold War.

It is interesting to note that continued and robust sales of this artwork may serve as a testament to the “triumph of capitalism” both in political terms and consumer economy.

Next: The Case of Fritz Stehwein