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The mature work of Jasper Johns begins in 1955 with his use of the American flag. In the expressionist paint strokes of John's flags, the vocabulary of geometry reentered American art. And the application of painterly richness of surface to a commonplace American icon signaled the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. |
The single flag - and later the target shape, arabic numerals, and letters of the alphabet - became the ubiquitous subject matter of the first period of Johns's art. From the beginning, Johns divested the flag of its original symbolic and conventional aesthetic usage. Instead, he transformed it into data for examining perception, visual ambiguity, and the meaning of art itself. What Johns painted was not the wavy, windblown banner of flagpoles and parades, but the flat, rigid flag characteristic of American folk art and craft. |
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Three Flags,
1958 50th
Anniversary Gift of the Gilman Foundation, Inc., the Lauder Foundation,
A. Alfred Taubman. The Whitney Museum of American Art was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. Since then its permanent collection has grown to much more than 6,000 works - drawings, paintings, photographs, prints and sculpture. - and now embodies a substantial portion of the history of American art of the 20th century. |
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This decision had less to do with evoking American folk tradition than with transforming a charged patriotic symbol into a subdued compositional proposition. His single-flag images never suggested spatial depth; they defied the usual pictorial structure of figure against ground. In the culminating work of the first period of John's art, Three Flags, the subject became its own ground. |
Each of the tiered flags is is diminished in scale by about twenty-five percent from the one behind, and projects outward, directly contrary to standard pictorial perspective. The interplay of one complete and two partially visible flags serves to emphasize both design and dimension. Instead of pictorializing the flag, as he had in earlier paintings, in Three Flags, Johns transformed it into an object. |
written by Patterson Sims
Associate Curator, Permanent Collection, The Whitney Museum of American Art
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September 11, 2001 New York Art World is grateful for the outpouring of concern from our friends throughout the world. We are thankful that all of us are safe, and pray that you and your loved ones are well. In this difficult time, we have experienced a myriad of emotions. One of the most overwhelming reactions is a sense of helplessness. We at New York Art World, so close to "ground zero" have found a way that we can all make a difference. We have profoundly felt the impact of this incident by proximity and through personal involvement. Join us in this show of solidarity. |