World-renowned sculptor of lifelike work in public places
J. Seward Johnson Jr., a sculptor who may be responsible for more double takes than anyone in history, thanks to his countless lifelike creations in public places — a businessman in downtown Manhattan, surfers at a Florida beach, a student eating a sandwich on a curb in Princeton, N.J. — died Wednesday at his home in Key West, Fla. He was 89.
His family said through a spokesman that the cause was cancer.
Mr. Johnson had another distinction besides his art. As a member of the family that founded Johnson & Johnson, the pharmaceutical and consumer products giant, he was one of six siblings who, in a high-profile court case in the 1980s, sought to overturn his father’s will, which left his vast fortune to a former maid, Barbara Piasecka Johnson, whom the senior Johnson had married late in life.
But more enduring were the sculptures, which often caught passersby unawares; many would pause for a closer look and, in the cellphone age, a picture. One sculpture in particular became something more than a curiosity. It was a work Mr. Johnson called “Double Check”: a seated businessman reviewing the contents of his briefcase.
The sculpture was in Liberty Park near the World Trade Center when the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, left the area in ruins. Many other artworks in the buildings and outside were destroyed, but this one, although knocked off his perch, survived, covered in debris.
In 2006 it was installed in the newly named Zuccotti Park, not far from its original spot.
John Seward Johnson Jr. was born April 16, 1930, in New Brunswick, N.J. His father was the son of one of the founders of Johnson & Johnson. His mother, Ruth Dill Johnson, was a native of Bermuda whose father had been Bermuda’s attorney general.
Mr. Johnson, by his own admission a poor student, was sent to the Forman School in Litchfield, Conn.
“It was a place for dyslexics,” he told The Times in 2002, “although we weren’t called that then.”
He tried college at the University of Maine, where he studied poultry husbandry. Then, in 1951, he joined the Navy.
After leaving the Navy in 1955, he took a management job in the family company, but he had a troubled first marriage to Barbara Kline.
Soon after their divorce in 1964, Mr. Johnson married Cecelia Joyce Horton, who got him interested in art. Sometimes they would paint together, although he wasn’t very good at it.
“I didn’t like what I could do with paint,” he told The Times, “so my wife suggested sculpture because I had some mechanical ability.”
He took some classes and made his first piece, in stainless steel. It won a contest sponsored by U.S. Steel.
In 1974, Mr. Johnson established the Johnson Atelier in Hamilton, N.J., a sculpture school and foundry where artisans helped fabricate his sculptures as well as those of other artists, including George Segal and Joel Shapiro. The foundry operated until 2004.
In 1984, Mr. Johnson created Grounds for Sculpture, a 42-acre sculpture park on a former fairground in Hamilton. Some of Mr. Johnson’s trompe l’oeil works are there, surprising visitors as they wander the property, but much of the work is by others, with abstract and other genres well represented.
One of his best-known works is “The Awakening,” a 15-foot-high depiction of a giant struggling to emerge from the earth. For years it was at Hains Point in Washington, although about a decade ago it was moved to Prince George’s County in Maryland. Another wellknown piece, which exists in several versions, is “Unconditional Surrender,” a 25foot-high re-creation of the famous V-J Day photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square.
Mr. Johnson also made a series of works called “Beyond the Frame,” threedimensional translations of 18th- and 19th-century paintings by Manet, Renoir and others. Some of his art has been displayed during Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Arts Festival and in PPG Plaza.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Johnson is survived by a son, John Seward Johnson III; a daughter, India Blake; and five grandchildren.