Have you ever looked at the flag of the United States of America, which has been on the world agenda with its 46th election recently, from these angles? This flag, which we are all familiar with and engraved in our memories with its red, white, and blue colors, is the subject of our article today.

America left England on 4 July 1776 with 13 colonies and declared its independence. Like any state, America sought to design a flag. The American flag today consists of 50 stars and 13 red and white stripes. These lines symbolize the historical 13 colonies and the white stars symbolize the 50 states. Among the colors in the flag, white represents purity and cleanliness, red represents heroism and courage, and blue represents perseverance.

Let’s look at the 5 different versions of the flag, which is sometimes repeated with various criticisms and sometimes with artistic concerns.

“Flag” by Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns is an American painter and his works are associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and pop art.

Johns was attracted to painting “things the mind already knows,” and claimed that using a familiar object like the flag freed himself from the need to create a new design and allowed him to focus on the execution of the painting.

“Deconstructed Flag (Out of Order)” by Brian Kenny

Brian Kenny (born 1982) is an American multidisciplinary artist. One of the major themes in Kenny’s work is the exploration of his own sexuality, checking the boundaries between genders.

Kenny reconfigured US flags, reflecting on what it means to be a disaffected gay American, the issues of social inequality and injustice. Devalued and deconstructed symbols, fallen or removed stars and stripes, the distortion and disfiguration evoke feelings of this discontent.

“Black Light Series: Flag For the Moon: Die N*****” by Faith Ringgold

Ringgold is a black artist, born and raised in Harlem during a time of civil unrest and social upheaval.

The American flag featured as a prominent symbol of racial enmities and divisions in works such as Black Light Series: Flag for the Moon: Die N— of 1969. The red strips are cut by the artist in order to stress that social ties are broken off by force.

“Who is bought and sold? Who is beyond the law? Who is free to choose? Who follows orders? Who salutes longest? Who prays loudest? Who dies first? Who laughs last?” by Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist and collagist. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as “you”, “your”, “I”, “we”, and “they”, addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, consumerism, and sexuality.

Kruger has said that, “I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren’t”. Here, when we look at her work as a whole, we see the American flag, but we start to consider what is happening in the details and what is happening inside.

“Untitled” by Keith Haring

Keith Allen Haring was an American artist whose pop art and graffiti-like work grew out of the New York City street culture of the 1980s.    The characters in Haring’s work; generally, they represent people and players in society.

Human figures depicted upside-down are usually B-boys and B-girls, the dancers of hip-hop, doing the iconic move in which they spin on their head. Figures contorting in backbends or jumps are probably also depictions of breakdancers.

References:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/american-flag-art_n_7683910?utm_hp_ref=world&ir=World

Writer:

Teslime Yıldız