We're standing in the galleries of The Art Institute of Chicago
looking at a painting by Benny Andrews
called Flag Day that dates
to 1966. We see a figure
emerging from the American Flag
the flag is turned on its side so that
the stripes are in a vertical orientation
the figure appears to be grasping
two of the stripes. It's hard not to read
those stripes of the flag as
bars, but it also feels like
he's enveloped in it and the flag is something reassuring
at the same time. Another way
of reading it, which is not as positive
is the way in which the flag is almost actually hiding the figure
or the figure is struggling to emerge from
from the stripes which of course could be
a metaphor for the ways in which the African American
community is constantly fighting for their own rights
or for visibility and with
Benny Andrews in particular, his interest in African Americans
being properly promoted with in the art world in America.
Andrews did grow up in a South
that was racially segregated and so this idea
of struggling to be seen in America
stuggling for ones' rights, these were
themes that were incredibly potent
in the 1960s. Very personal to the artist
who was born in 1930 in Georgia, to
parents who were sharecroppers. He could only go to school when he wasn't needed on the farm
Right. and sharecropping is
very much what it sounds like, you agree
to farm a piece of land for a share
in the crops, but the landlord supplies
you with everything else so this created a cycle of
poverty for so many, but at the same time
his identity is more complicated than it sounds
at first, since his great grandfather was a white
plantation owner, his grandfather was white
his background is very mixed
and so we tend to pigeonhole people but
things are a lot more complicated. I think Andrews really
defied categorization in many ways, he spoke about
how he didn't want his art to be only representative pop art,
or figural, he wanted to be a painter of his time.
And he didn't want to be pigeonholed as an activist artist either
Although Flag Day, for example, is not specifically
autobiographical, it does represent
the larger issues at hand that deal with identity and race
he was mobilized to present work
that not only was in some ways hopeful
of what the American Dream can mean but also very critical
and I think that's what's so strong about him and his work
is that he was able to address both aspects of being an American.
And so we could think about the flag as a symbol of freedom
and democracy, but we would also need to ask
freedom and democracy and equal rights for whom?
Right. And there's a darker history, and I think that that's something that
Andrews refused to ignore
in his work. We can see the red and white bars
of the flag that part and move to make room
for him so there's that sense of attempting
to make visible, to be included in the
history. Returning to the idea of the bars, I think
that we would be remiss not to mention Benny Andrews'
later involvement with the prison art program
a project that was a part of the organization he
co-founded in 1969, the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition
which was an organization of African American artists
and creatives and eventually included white artists
as well that were promoting the
presence of African American artists and curators
within the art community. The problem that arose in 1968-1969
when the Metropolitan Museum of Art was planning
an exhibition called 'Harlem on my mind'
that didn't include the work of a single African American artist
so it's important to put this painting
in the context of the civil rights movement. Benny Andrews
grew up in the Jim Crow South with laws
that institutionalized segregation
that institutionalized discrimination
and kept people in terrible cycles of poverty
and so the Civil Rights Act of 1964
and the Voter Rights Act of 1965
did a lot to dismantle the Jim Crow
laws that were so oppressive to so many African Americans.
In 1966, there was the hope
that African Americans might gain a more equal
place but at the same time nodding to the fact that
the movement hadn't fully affected
every area of culture and society.
That expression on his face can't
be easily interpreted. It's not fear,
or anger, or complacency,
or protest; it's very hard to
locate it. I think he's left it open for interpretation.
The flag is such a potent symbol
in American art history. The American flag
has always been an important symbol and I think most popularized
by Jasper Johns, the post-war artist
who inserted the American flag into his work in the mid-to-late 50s
which is exactly around the time that Benny Andrews moved to New York
But unlike Johns' very flat compositions here
Andrews really enlivens the flag
the stripes have curves, they seem like fabric
the white is not evenly distributed, the stars are
unfinished and so the imperfections of the flag are
highlighted here. So the flag moves
here in a way that -right- it doesn't move in Jasper John's
the flag is a static symbol but here moving
with the effect of an African American
figure, which does make me think that
there is a kind of message of hope
in some way that decades of protest
and the civil rights movement that America
can change for the better and be a place that
is more inclusive, and that recognizes the civil rights
of every citizen.