Figure 5 is from the Black and White Numerals series, the complete suite of ten lithographs that Johns produced at Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles in 1968, printed by Jim Webb, Richard Wilke, and Kenneth Tyler. It is among the most technically ambitious and visually commanding prints of his career. The numeral is pressed close to the picture plane, its form simultaneously flat and volumetric, the lithographic wash working in tonal gradations of grey and black that are entirely different in character from his painted numerals of the preceding decade. Johns had explored the single digit numeral in paintings since the late 1950s as one of his canonical 'things the mind already knows’, a sign so familiar it becomes invisible until painting makes it strange again. The complete series is held in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Whitney, the Tate, and many other major institutions.