- [Male Narrator] We're on the fourth floor
of the Museum of Modern Art in New York,
and we're looking at Jasper Johns' flag from 1954, 55,
one of his seminal works.
- [Female Narrator] This is a very important image isn't it?
- [Male Narrator] It's really, it's a great image.
- [Female Narrator] What makes it great?
- [Male Narrator] Well --
- [Female Narrator] I mean, it's a flag,
to play Devil's advocate here.
- [Male Narrator] Yes --
- [Female Narrator] Betsy Ross made a flag.
- [Male Narrator] She did.
- [Female Narrator] And it was handmade.
- [Male Narrator] And so is this.
In fact, I think it probably makes sense
to just spend a moment describing what we're seeing.
- [Female Narrator] Okay.
- [Male Narrator] Because if you look at it,
it's actually made in a really specific way.
It's built up on pieces of wood that actually
stand off from the surface fairly substantially,
about two-and-a-half inches,
and it's made out of three objects, actually.
There are three pieces that are put together.
There's the piece with the stars, the field of the stars;
the stripes that are at that level;
and then the stripes that are below.
- [Female Narrator] Mm-hmm.
- [Male Narrator] And then if you look at the surface,
you see that it's this very heavily wrought surface,
this factor that's a result of this material --
- [Female Narrator] Looks like kind of collage.
- [Male Narrator] Well it is actually, underneath.
- [Female Narrator] And paper mache.
- [Male Narrator] Underneath you can actually see newspaper.
- [Female Narrator] Mm-hmm.
- [Male Narrator] That's been ripped.
- [Male Narrator] And then above it,
the paint is very translucent, and that's because
it's not actually traditional oil paint,
it's in caustic, which is an ancient Egyptian --
- [Female Narrator] Waxy.
- [Male Narrator] Yeah, it's wax.
It's melted wax that actually holds the pigment.
- [Female Narrator] Right.
- [Male Narrator] And he did that because he really
wanted us to be aware of this as a physically made object --
- [Female Narrator] Yes.
- [Male Narrator] Not as a photograph of a flag,
not as a print of a flag.
- [Female Narrator] Not as a mass-produced flag.
- [Male Narrator] Yeah.
- [Female Narrator] Yeah, well I think that's probably why
my association was immediately to Betsy Ross.
- [Male Narrator] Okay, fair enough.
- [Female Narrator] To something that was actually --
- [Male Narrator] Made by hand.
- [Female Narrator] Handmade, right.
- [Male Narrator] And I think that that's fair.
But then, what was implicit in your question was:
why is this art?
- [Female Narrator] Right.
- [Male Narrator] And why is this relevant?
- [Female Narrator] Exactly.
- [Male Narrator] And I think there's a lot of really
interesting plays here because I think that Johns
is really concerned with how one can ride
that very narrow line between art and between life.
If you look at the choices that he's made here,
Johns has not represented a flag waving in a breeze,
on a flagpole on top of a hill --
- [Female Narrator] Right, this seems like a icon
of a flag in a way to me.
- [Male Narrator] Well, that's right and it questions
whether it's a work of art because in a sense,
once he's chosen the fact that he's going to represent
the American flag, he's given up a lot of authority.
- [Female Narrator] Right.
- [Male Narrator] The colors are chosen,
the composition is chosen.
- [Female Narrator] Mm-hmm.
- [Male Narrator] It's all done for him,
there's no drawing.
What is it that we celebrate when we look at a work of art?
Do we celebrate the draftsmanship?
Do we celebrate the thoughtful --
- [Female Narrator] Originality.
- [Male Narrator] Right, the thoughtful color.
In a sense, he's saying --
- [Female Narrator] The content, the ideas.
- [Male Narrator] I wanna give all of that up.
This is not about making, but of course,
then there's the conundrum
that it is very much about making,
and he makes the handicraft very, very obvious.
- [Female Narrator] Mm-hmm.
- [Male Narrator] So what is Johns up to then?
What's the motivation behind this then?
- [Female Narrator] Well he certainly makes us look at it
in a way, and focus our attention, it,
a flag out of something the flag normally isn't made out of.
- [Male Narrator] So that's interesting, a fresh look
at something that we don't generally consider
as a work of art.
That sounds very much like Dada.
It sounds very much like Duchamp.
- [Female Narrator] It does.
- [Male Narrator] And in fact, Johns and Rauschenberg
were both called neo-Dadaists.
- [Female Narrator] Mm-hmm.
- [Male Narrator] And so I think that you're
on target there absolutely.
But this is a really loaded subject.
The American flag, I can't think of a symbol
that is more potent, especially in 1955,
at the height of the Cold War.
Think about just how incredibly powerful this symbol is.
- [Female Narrator] Right.
- [Male Narrator] This is not a neutral symbol.
- [Female Narrator] No.
- [Male Narrator] And so, what is it that one comes to?
When this was first displayed, people had very
powerful reactions to it, both pro and con,
depending on their political leanings.
- [Female Narrator] Right.
- [Male Narrator] And, what Johns --
- [Female Narrator] Yeah, pretty much doing anything
to a flag will do that.
- [Male Narrator] Even representing it.
- [Female Narrator] Right.
- [Male Narrator] And so, I think that what Johns
would say here is that in fact, this is a mirror.
And where the real content is contained
is not in the representation itself,
but in all of the baggage that each viewer brings to it.
This was an idea that both Johns and Rauschenberg
were working out, and when you come --
- [Female Narrator] So giving us something
very, very neutral --
- [Male Narrator] That's very loaded but very neutral --
- [Female Narrator] But that, right.
- [Male Narrator] And so one comes with all of one's
contempt, all of one's anger, all of one's love,
all of one's patriotism, whatever one comes with,
this is what one sees, and therein lies the content.
That is to say that after the second World War,
artists began to think that the authority,
that authority itself was suspect.
And why should the artist be, in a sense,
telling a specific kind of narrative?
Why should the artist have authority over what we think?
Is it possible, in a sense, to allow this and to allow art
to function in a totally individualized way?
(jazzy piano music)