2003-04-25

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Guardian Unlimited | Arts features | Star turn : Jasper Johns

Is it patriotic? Subversive? Both? Jonathan Jones on how Jasper Johns made a provocative masterpiece out of the American flag In a recent Simpsons episode, Bart's friend Milhouse vomits on the American flag, offending, as newsreader Kent Brockman reports, "flag hags everywhere". The Simpsons, with its ambiguous patriotism, is in a tradition of American art since the 1950s. What American artists up to and including Matt Groening have done is to at once love and question the US. And perhaps no artist ever did both quite so compactly as Jasper Johns when he painted an American flag. Johns, who has been an unlikely guest voice on The Simpsons, has an exhibition of recent prints opening. But it is his almost 50-year-old Flag that is his most current and contemporary work. So contemporary that some people will find its large-scale presence on these pages offensive. It is there in all its provocation: well, how do you like that?