Jasper Johns helped break the hold of Abstract Expressionism on modern American art and cleared the way for Pop Art. He was influenced by Dada and particularly by Marcel Duchamp, whom he met in 1960. This print was produced at ULAE, New York, an important print studio established in 1957 by Tatyana and Max Grosman, where Johns first worked in 1960, initially in lithography, producing print versions of his iconic flags, maps and targets from his paintings. Having produced some 300 prints since 1960, he later expanded his repertoire to etching in 1967. Here Johns experiments with oil and soap (both greasy), imprinting his hand and capturing the sweeping gesture of his forearm, creating a Vitruvian arc. The arc, perhaps indicating a direction or passage of time, disrupts the horizontal/vertical bands in the background of the print, partially obscuring the stencilled words RED, YELLOW, BLUE in this monochrome work. Hatteras is one of a series of works created in tribute to the American modernist poet Hart Crane (1899-1932) and is titled after his poem Cape Hatteras, about an area of turbulent waters on the coast of North Carolina, where major Atlantic currents collide.