''White Flag'' is an
encaustic painting
Encaustic painting, also known as hot wax painting, is a form of painting that involves a heated wax medium to which colored pigments have been added. The molten mix is applied to a surface—usually prepared wood, though canvas and other mat ...
by the American artist
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930) is an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker whose work is associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and pop art. He is well known for his depictions of the American flag and other US-related top ...
. Created in 1955, soon after his first flag painting, entitled simply ''
Flag
A flag is a piece of fabric (most often rectangular or quadrilateral) with a distinctive design and colours. It is used as a symbol, a signalling device, or for decoration. The term ''flag'' is also used to refer to the graphic design empl ...
'', it was the first painting by Johns to be acquired by the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
in New York, bought from the artist in 1998. The price was undisclosed but experts estimated its value at the time as more than $20 million.
The painting is a relatively early example of the many works created by Johns from 1954, inspired by a dream of the
U.S. flag
The national flag of the United States of America, often referred to as the ''American flag'' or the ''U.S. flag'', consists of thirteen equal horizontal stripes of red (top and bottom) alternating with white, with a blue rectangle in the c ...
. Painted on canvas using encaustic, oil, newsprint, and charcoal, ''White Flag'' is the first
monochrome
A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, monochrom ...
rendering of the US flag by Johns. Measuring by , it is also the largest of his flag paintings.
Johns worked on three separately stretched areas of canvas—the 48 stars to the upper left, seven of the thirteen stripes to the upper right, and the remaining six longer stripes below—which were then combined to form a whole. The U.S. flag is depicted in the form it took between 1912 and 1959, with 48 white stars on a blue canton representing the then
U.S. states
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...
(prior to the admission of Alaska and Hawaii) with thirteen red and white stripes. The stars and stripes are built up as a
collage
Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...
of paper and fabric which were dipped in molten
beeswax
Beeswax (''cera alba'') is a natural wax produced by honey bees of the genus ''Apis''. The wax is formed into scales by eight wax-producing glands in the abdominal segments of worker bees, which discard it in or at the hive. The hive workers ...
before being applied to a ground of beeswax. The three collages were then joined together and covered with a layer of fast-setting dirty white encaustic (beeswax mixed with white pigment), with highlights added in white oil paint. Johns's rapid brushstrokes are clearly visible in the roughly-finished encaustic medium. The completed work covers the whole of the canvas, with no frame.
Johns's selection of the US flag allows him to explore a familiar two-dimensional object, with its simple internal geometric structure and a complex symbolic meaning. The built-up collage distorts the flags flatness, while the off-white encaustic obliterates the flag's usual red-white-and-blue colouring, leaving a ghostly embalmed remnant. Johns's
Neo-Dada
Neo-Dada was a movement with audio, visual and literary manifestations that had similarities in method or intent with earlier Dada artwork. It sought to close the gap between art and daily life, and was a combination of playfulness, iconoclasm, a ...
work anticipates aspects of
pop art,
minimal art
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or conc ...
, and
conceptual art
Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...
.
The 1988
Christie's
Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is ...
auction, selections from the
Tremaine Collection, of a smaller version with a White Flag theme for USD$7 million was briefly the
highest auction price for an artwork by a living artist, as the record was supplanted the next day by another Johns painting.
(Regarding the smaller version, note the difference in artwork size, exhibition histories, and ownership over the years of the two works, referring to the Met webpage for the larger 'White flag'.) This smaller version was shown in photographs by Louise Lawler documenting the artwork owners' interiors and its appearance in the 1988 auction.
[(March 15, 2019)]
Jasper Johns. 'White flag', (1955-58)
'artdesigncafe'. Retrieved September 16, 2021.
Notes
References
''White Flag'' Metropolitan Museum of Art
''White Flag'' Metropolitan Museum of Art
''New York Times'', 29 October 1998
''American Culture in The 1950s'' Martin Halliwell, p.203–205
{{Jasper Johns
1955 paintings
Paintings by Jasper Johns
Paintings in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Flags in art