Three Flags
Jasper Johns, 1958
Image not available: work still under copyright
Three Flags is a 1958 painting by Jasper Johns, one of the most influential American artists of the postwar period. The work consists of three canvases painted in hot wax and arranged in a stepped formation, each roughly a quarter smaller than the one beneath it. This staggered arrangement gives the piece a sense of depth that a single flat surface would not have. Each canvas shows the United States flag in the version that was current when it was painted, with 48 white stars on a blue canton and thirteen alternating red and white stripes, the colours and proportions following the federal standard. Oddly, the perspective seems reversed, as the smaller panels appear to push out toward the viewer. Only the topmost, smallest canvas is fully visible, while the two below it are partly hidden. The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York bought it in 1980 for one million dollars from the collectors Burton and Emily Hall Tremaine, a sum reported at the time as likely the highest ever paid for a work by a living artist. Since the early 1960s it has appeared in many exhibitions and has drawn attention in books and magazines on art and American history.
- Painter
- Jasper Johns
- Date
- 1958
- Medium
- canvas, wax paint
- Museum
- Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City
- Depicts
- flag of the United States