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John Seward Johnson II (April 16, 1930 – March 10, 2020), also known as J. Seward Johnson Jr. and Seward Johnson, was an American artist known for trompe-l'œil painted bronze statues. He was a grandson of Robert Wood Johnson I, the co-founder of Johnson & Johnson, and of Colonel Thomas Melville Dill of Bermuda. He designed life-size bronze statues that were castings of living people, depicting them engaged in day-to-day activities. A large staff of technicians did the fabrication of the works he designed. Computers and digital technology often were used in the manufacturing process. Sometimes the manufacture was contracted in China. He was the founder of Grounds For Sculpture, a 42-acre (17 ha) sculpture park and museum located in Hamilton Township, Mercer County, New Jersey. Early life Johnson was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey on April 16, 1930. His father was John Seward Johnson I, and his mother was Ruth Dill, the sister of actress Diana Dill, making him a first cousin of actor Michael Douglas. Johnson grew up with five siblings: Mary Lea Johnson Richards, Elaine Johnson, Diana Melville Johnson, Jennifer Underwood Johnson, and James Loring "Jimmy" Johnson. His parents divorced around 1937. His father remarried two years later, producing his only brother, Jimmy Johnson, making him an uncle to film director Jamie Johnson.Johnson attended Forman School for dyslexics. Later, he attended the University of Maine, where he majored in poultry husbandry, but did not graduate. Johnson also served four years in the United States Navy during the Korean War. Career Johnson worked for Johnson & Johnson until 1962, when he was fired by his uncle Robert Wood Johnson II, who had turned the family business into one of the world's largest healthcare corporations.Johnson maintained a studio in Princeton, New Jersey and later, another at a site in Mercerville, New Jersey that formerly had been used for the New Jersey State Fair.His early artistic efforts focused on painting, after which he turned to sculpture in 1968. Examples of his statues include: Spring (1979), a bronze dedicated in 1979, set in the Crim Dell Woods section of the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. Other examples of Spring castings include the East Brunswick, New Jersey public library and the Fitton Center for Creative Arts in Hamilton, Ohio. The Awakening (1980), his largest and most dramatic work, a 70-foot (21 m) five-part statue that depicts a giant trying to free himself from underground. The sculpture was located at Hains Point in Washington, D.C. for nearly twenty-eight years while still owned by Johnson. It was moved to Prince George's County, Maryland in February, 2008, and an attempt was made by the new curator to correct some of the scale distortions of the original installation by altering some implied underground connections and placing the parts in different relationships to each other. Double Check (1982), a statue of a businessman checking his attaché case, formerly located in Liberty Plaza Park across an intersection from the World Trade Center, as part of the public space required by a zoning variance granted to the developer of the adjoining skyscraper. Widely published photographs of the debris-battered and dust-covered statue were taken following the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. The statue, scars and all, was returned to a prominent corner of the restored and renamed Zuccotti Park in 2006, again open to the public. Periodically, the statue has been adorned by tourists, pranksters, and even Occupy Wall Street protesters. Makeshift Memorial is an adapted 2nd casting of Double Check, placed in 2004 along the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway in Jersey City, New Jersey opposite the original World Trade Center site, and is a component of the Jersey City 9/11 Memorial Hitchhiker (1983), a statue at Hofstra University, at the California Avenue gate, near a road leading away from campus. Allow Me (Portland, Oregon) (1984), a statue of man holding an umbrella, in Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon (part of the Allow Me series). Lunch Break (1983), a statue of a worker sitting on a bench, taking a break for lunch with a cigar in hand and lunch box at his side. Statues are known to be placed in Zichron Ya'akov, Israel (originally in Morristown, New Jersey and brought to Israel by the Jerusalem Foundation), in Edmonton, Canada, and Key West, Florida. Competition (1984), a statue of Julie Wier, Fairview Heights, Illinois, chosen to represent the spirit of the people of St. Louis as winner of the "picture yourself as a work of art" contest. Dedicated on June 16, 1984 unsigned St. Louis County Library in St. Louis, Missouri. Waiting (1988), a statue of a man reading a paper, in Australia Square, Sydney, Australia Waiting (1992), a statue of a man reading a paper, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Déjeuner Déjà Vu (1994), at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton Township, Mercer County, New Jersey, a facility founded by Johnson, is a three-dimensional restaging of Édouard Manet's painting, Le déjeuner sur l'herbeCopyright Infringement (1994), at Grounds for Sculpture (a facility founded by Johnson) is a sculpture that he named to flaunt his disdain for criticism of his copies of the iconic works of fine art artists with international recognition. It represents the fine artist Édouard Manet, whose work he has copied. Unconditional Surrender (a series with several material versions begun in 2005), a spokesperson for Johnson has stated that this series is based on a photograph that is in the public domain, Kissing the War Goodbye, by Victor Jorgensen, however, the Jorgensen photographic image does not extend low enough to include the lower legs and shoes of the subjects, revealed in Alfred Eisenstaedt's famous photograph, V–J day in Times Square, that are represented identically in the statue. A spokesperson for Life has called it a copyright infringement of the latter image. Nonetheless, the first version, a bronze statue in life-size, was placed on temporary exhibition during the 2005 anniversary of V-J Day at the Times Square Information Center near where the original photographs were taken in Manhattan.Several slightly differing twenty-five-feet-tall-versions have been constructed in styrofoam and aluminum with little detail, painted, and put on display by Johnson in San Diego, California, Key West, Florida, Snug Harbor in New York, and Sarasota, Florida. Their immensity has drawn crowds of viewers at each site although the view of them from nearby is severely limited, essentially allowing a vista of the legs and up the skirt. The statues have been described as kitsch by one critic. Johnson later would dub the statue "Embracing Peace", which he treated as a double entendre when spoken.A proposal to establish a permanent location for a copy on the Sarasota bay front generated a heated controversy about the suitability of the statue to the location, suitability as a mi.... Discover the Rich Johnson The Editors Of Outdoor Life popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Rich Johnson The Editors Of Outdoor Life books.