Commentary on Flag series, by which Jasper Johns  became known and established, placing him as a pivotal figure in modern art.

 

Abstract Expressionism with its focus on inner emotions and existential anxieties dominated the art world in post-war America. However, in 1954, when Jasper Johns launched his career in art with his painting, Flag, he offered an emotionally cool and detached reading that contrasted with the works of art, of artists such as Pollock, Rothko or de Kooning. Indeed, Johns’ innovative work made use of recognisable subjects, such as a flag, a target, or numbers, which subsequently generated aesthetic and conceptual questioning. Familiar and seemingly impersonal, Jasper Johns’ Flag (1) measuring 107.3 cm × 153.8 cm, was composed of simple geometric elements in a limited colour palette reproducing the appearance of an American flag. Displayed today at the MoMA, John’s artwork Flag is one of a series of approximatively forty similarly themed artworks (2). His painterly appropriation made up of shreds of newspaper dipped in encaustic, pigment dissolved in hot wax, enabled snippets of text to remain visible through the ‘waxy’ texture.

By choosing the imagery of the American flag, Johns introduced a realism that blurred the lines between ‘high art’ and everyday life. It also privileged an interplay between thought and vision, which challenged the viewer with cross-referencing. The use of a ‘readymade’ form was inspired by Marcel Duchamp. His legacy of elevating universal, ordinary mass-produced objects to the status of art, made it possible ‘to define art as a mental act instead of a physical one’. Furthermore, Flag, a representation of an iconic and potent national symbol, was produced against a backdrop of McCarthyism, at a time when the socio-political landscape of America was marked by growing nationalism, anticommunist suspicion and repression. Although perceived by some as provocative, Johns ‘cautioned against giving any political meaning to his work’. Subsequently, Flag’s hybrid and textured nature, a combination of object, painting and collage, juxtaposed the obvious and the overlooked, leaving viewers to confront a straightforward image, that upon closer inspection, revealed layers of technique, multiple intentions and as many meanings.

‘Expressive qualities’ explains Curator and lecturer Catherine Craft that enter his ‘paintings not through obvious references to the artist but through the physical properties of the work itself’. Jasper Johns challenges the viewer to look better and harder. Yet is not interested in the viewer understanding his meaning, preferring the viewer reflect on the concept itself. Craft discloses that the appropriation of the flag reflects his refusal to expose his ‘feelings’ and a resistance to clear categorisation. Johns wants his work to be open to interpretation, with no fixed meaning, advocating the notion of ‘suggestion’.

‘Was it an actual flag, a picture of a flag’ or a painting. ‘It can be both and still be neither’, Johns asserted, commenting, that one ‘can have a certain view of a thing at one time and a different view of it at another’.

 

  1. Jasper Johns, Flag, encaustic oil, collage on fabric, mounted on plywood,                                                                              three panels, 107.3 x 153.8 cm, The Museum of Modern Art of New York

 

2. Collage of assorted images, author’s own

  • Jasper Johns, White Flag, 1955, encaustic, oil, newsprint, and charcoal on    canvas, 198.9 × 306.7 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York
  • Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 1958, encaustic on canvas, 77.8 × 115.6 × 11.7 cm, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (author’s own)
  • Jasper Johns, Flag on Orange Field, 1957, oil on  canvas, 124.5 x 167.6 cm, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany
  • Jasper Johns, Flag (with 64 stars), 1955, graphite pencil and lighter fluid (?) on paper, 21.5 x 25.7 cm, Collection of the artist, Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
  • Jasper Johns, Two Flags, 1959, acrylic on canvas, 201.3 x 148 cm, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (Vienna), on loan from the Ludwig Collection, Aachen

 

 

 

 

Craft C. (2009) ‘Jasper Johns’, Parkstone Press International, New York, USA, online. Available at : https://www.everand.com/read/282454198/Jasper-Johns#

Varnedoe, K. and Hollevoet C. (2002) Jasper Johns, Writings, Sketchbook Notes, Interviews, (ed.) Varnedoe K., The Museum of Modern Art, New York

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78805

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