Flags

The flag of the United States is a highly potent symbol of patriotism that simultaneously unites and divides the nation it represents and has long been celebrated and disparaged by artists enthralled by its power while remaining wary of its application.

This exhibition will survey artworks made using or depicting the American flag and that exemplify the ambivalent nationalism, patriotic nostalgia, and social anxiety of the highly politicized motif. Works will date from the late 1950s––a period of huge historical significance for the United States and the global spread of capitalism––through to our contemporary moment of heightened political tension.

Among the first generation of flag-wielding artists is Jasper Johns, who described appeal of the flag in relation to its pervasiveness: it was something “seen and not looked at”¹. Claes Oldenburg, on the other hand, considered the flag’s ubiquity a symptom of the commercialization of patriotism and history, and the family of flags he made from cardboard and driftwood in the summer of 1960 in Provincetown, Cape Cod, are both parody and symptom of the chronic idolatry he encountered there.

Following the Civil Rights Movement and protests against the Vietnam War the flag became an increasingly charged cultural symbol in the late 1960s and 1970s, and Douglas Huebler, Faith Ringgold, Edward Kienholz, and Ming Smith were among the artists reinterpreting its symbolic implications. In 1990 David Hammons debuted his African American Flag in the red, green and black palette of the Black Liberation Flag, and the following year Hans Haacke responded to the national disgrace of the Gulf War with Collateral, a rusted shopping cart full of flag buttons with the caption “May God bless the victory of the allied troop [sic]”.

Among the many examples of contemporary artists extending this critical investigation into the present are Sanford Biggers, Carla Edwards, Glenn Ligon, Eric. N. Mack, Kiyan Williams, and Hank Willis Thomas with new works made especially for the exhibition.

A portion of the proceeds from the exhibition will be donated to America Votes, the nation’s largest grassroots voter mobilization effort.

Artists: Benny Andrews, Diane Arbus, Sanford Biggers, Chakaia Booker, William Copley, Sam Durant, Carla Edwards, Elliott Erwitt, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Wayne Gonzales, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Nancy Grossman, Hans Haacke, David Hammons, Lyle Ashton Harris, Rachel Harrison, Jonathan Horowitz, Douglas Huebler, Sonya Kelliher-Combs, Jasper Johns, Cheyenne Julien, Edward Kienholz, Josh Kline, Louise Lawler, Jacob Lawrence, Sol LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Glenn Ligon, Robert Longo, Peter Moore, Eric N. Mack, Richard Marquis, Claes Oldenburg, Gordon Parks, Pope.L, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Faith Ringgold, Dread Scott, Gedi Sibony, Ming Smith, Hugh Steers, Tseng Kwong Chi, Kiyan Williams, Hank Willis Thomas, Garry Winogrand.