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Flag

Encaustic, oil, and collage on fabric mounted on plywood (1954–1955) by Jasper Johns. The American flag rendered at actual flag dimensions using hot wax (encaustic) with collaged newspaper. A pivotal Neo-Dada work challenging the division between symbol and picture.

Scholarly Significance

Jasper Johns's Flag bridges Abstract Expressionism and Pop/Neo-Dada. The American flag-as-painting challenges the distinction between image and object, symbol and surface.

Notes

  • ·Jasper Johns (born 1930) began Flag in 1954 after reportedly dreaming of painting the American flag.
  • ·He applied encaustic (pigment in hot wax) over collaged newspaper — each section of the flag is built up from many layers, the newspaper visible beneath the wax.
  • ·The central question Johns posed: is this a flag or a painting of a flag? The work resists both answers: it is neither purely symbolic (a flag) nor purely representational (a painting of a flag). It is both simultaneously.
  • ·This idea — 'things the mind already knows' (Johns's phrase) — broke with Abstract Expressionism's demand for pure invention and opened the path to Neo-Dada and Pop Art.
  • ·The work was first shown at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, in 1958; critic Robert Rosenblum described the opening as one of the most decisive moments in recent art.
  • ·Donated to MoMA by Philip Johnson in 1973.