In what seems like an unconsciously premonitory postmodern statement, Jasper Johns once said that his work nourishes itself. He was probably referring to the self-nourishing dynamic present in his work, which created a situation in which development and growth were by-products of accumulation. By containing what had preceded it, his oeuvre may be likened to a stratified geological formation: the deeper we go in examining his later work, the more images from his earlier work will come to light. The mode of accumulation of the images in these later works ranges between layered arrangements – i.e., where one image conceals another – and collagistic arrangements in which the images are placed beside or above one another. In any case, this practice obliges the viewer to begin a complex task of decipherment that is similar in its essence to a detective’s investigation or the solving of a riddle. In this essay I employed a flash-back tactic, a kind of reverse chronology that makes possible a retrospective reading of his oeuvre – from the later works to the earlier ones – in order to understand the distinctive way in which his work nourishes itself.