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Three Flags, 1958 By Jasper Johns |
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In the telescoped version of the story, the answer to Pollock's and de Kooning's heroic, nearly unconscious grapplings with paint, canvas and their own personal demons was a flag. In 1955, Jasper Johns--an artist making a living doing store-window designs--dreamed that he'd painted a flag, and then did it. Just a flag, flat and stretched out, with feathery, rich brush strokes of encaustic--a bee's wax- and resin-based paint--covering the surface of the painting. Within the art world, the act was a genius stroke of heresy. Johns had gone from the primal howlings of Abstract Expressionism back to cool representation in one painting. The image didn't mean much to the artist himself, though he said, "Using the design of the American flag took care of a great deal for me because I didn't have to design it." When Johns exhibited his painting at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in 1958, the Museum of Modern Art bought it immediately. A few years later, de Kooning--unimpressed with Johns' work and grouchy at his success and at Castelli's ability to move art--said, "Give Castelli a couple of beer cans and he'll sell them." The deadpan Johns promptly made a hand-painted bronze of two Ballantine's ale cans, and Castelli promptly sold them. |
