Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954–55 (dated on reverse 1954), encaustic, oil, and collage on fabric mounted on plywood, three panels, 42-1/4 x 60-5/8″ / 107.3 x 153.8 cm (MoMA)
[0:00] [music]
Sal Khan: [0:04] This is one that actually does speak to me in a very powerful way, but when you look at something like an American flag, I think I kind of get it. I mean, it’s such a powerful icon or image, and it evokes so many things, and it’s something that you see so frequently, at least if you’re an American.
[0:21] And if you’re not an American, it’s something that you still probably see relatively frequently and probably does represent something to you, but then to have it kind of reimaged and reimaged in this, I don’t know, antiqued way. I can’t fully articulate it, and I won’t claim that it’s somehow challenging my philosophy in some profound way, but I get it at a base level, what’s trying to go on here.
[0:43] I think that’s why this painting has gotten so much popular traction. I mean, it was on the cover of one of my history books when I was in high school. There are shirts that are made with this image. Am I not seeing the full “there” when I’m describing it that way, or is there even more to it?
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:58] I think you’re absolutely right, and I think that Johns would be really happy to hear what you just said. I think he wanted this painting to function as something that did raise all kinds of meanings in the person who walked up to it.
[1:10] In a sense, what he’s shown us is not so much a flag as a mirror, because it is such a potent symbol. We all walk up to it with a lot of personal life experience, and it can mean very different things to very many different people. In a sense, he’s given us a very neutral field.
[1:28] So let’s look at it really closely. We’re not looking at a printed American flag, and we’re not looking at a flag of cloth. In fact, some critics at the time asked, “Is this a painting, or is this a flag?” In other words, is it a representation, or is it an actual flag?
[1:45] Of course, something that is symbolic, like a flag, can raise that kind of issue, which is one of the reasons that I think Johns was interested in it.
[1:54] Let’s just look at the surface for a moment. This is an object that actually stands off the wall a few inches. It’s canvas that’s on top of plywood, and so it is this slightly shallow box-like form.
[2:06] Then, if you look at the surface, it’s really heavily worked. It’s not traditional oil paint or even the more modern acrylic. This is something that’s called encaustic, which is an ancient Egyptian painting technique that Johns revived, and other people have used it in history, but it’s ancient.
[2:23] And it’s translucent and it’s lumpy, but it also allows you to see through it. And when you look through this sort of lumpy surface of wax, what you see are strips of newspaper. It’s torn up, and so you can’t really read it. There’s not a continuous story, but it is clearly this pigment, this wax, on top of the debris of our political life.
Sal: [2:46] I think that’s why — maybe you guys are just doing a good job training me. This one really speaks to me, especially the texture and the fact that it is not printed. It is handmade. It has those layers to it. It’s a very powerful idea. When you just have a printed flag, it simplifies what a country is or what the ideas a country represents are and its history.
[3:08] When you look at this painting, yes, it’s an American flag. There’s context to America. There’s a history to America. There’s depth to America. There’s texture to America. [If] you look closer at America, it’s not this simple idea. There’s many, many, many layers to it. This does a really good job. This is why this is a painting a lot of people respond to.
[3:30] Even people who might be traditionally skeptical to modern art, I think they viscerally feel a lot of those things when they see that. They feel a depth, a connection, to the narrative of America more than just this very red-white-and-blue simple idea of it.
Dr. Zucker: [3:44] That’s exactly right. I think that Johns has taken this opportunity to reimagine then what art can be. Art can still, in some really fundamental way, represent really complex things. Not necessarily through the careful rendering or the careful representation of objects on a table or a human face, but through a kind of symbolic language actually reference and in some ways actually depict a very complex American history.
[4:14] I think that’s exactly right.
Sal: [4:16] We talk a lot about a lot of artists. What’s really of note — although I think this is one of those pieces that I actually don’t need much context to really appreciate it — but to go to the next level of context, was Jasper Johns really one of the first to take really powerful images, like an American flag, and re-render them in this type of way?
Dr. Zucker: [4:38] He was. In fact, this is art that’s being produced before Pop Art exists. This idea of actually turning his canvas, turning his paintbrush, on a visual form that is itself fixed is a fascinating idea. Think about what he’s giving up. The things that we value in painting traditionally have to do with the artist’s choice of color, of composition.
[5:00] Those things are given here. Those are already set. He’s not messing with that. And yet this is still not entirely a flag so much as a representation of a flag. In that way, it’s walking on this very narrow edge.
Sal: [5:16] It’s really strange to me, because we’ve talked about the traditional art…if you go back 500, 800 years ago, it was always representational, all the way to the Renaissance. Then more modern art has all been about ideas and pushing our thinking.
[5:29] This definitely falls into that latter category, but it really does — maybe it’s just me — but it emotes something in me that is aesthetic, that is as powerful as any of these.
[5:40] Obviously, it’s an American flag, and that by itself can create powerful emotions, but just the way it was rendered also creates feelings and depth that I haven’t actually felt from a lot of the modern pieces we’ve looked at.
[5:53] [music]
