Jasper Johns Three Flags 1958
8 1/2 x 11 inchesJasper Johns Three Flags 1958, 2001
paper: 8 1/2 x 11 inches
frame: 10 1/2 x 14 1/2 x inches
Signed in felt-tip pen "Richard Pettibone" with date stamped in black "SEP 11 2001" lower right.
Provenance
Private Collection, New York, acquired from the Artist
Richard Pettibone is one of the central figures of the discourse on Appropriation Art, which developed out of the Pop Art movement in the early 1960s. At the beginning of his career, Pettibone appropriated the work of artists who were his contemporaries, such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns. As a source for his work, Pettibone used images printed in the pages of Artforum. The artist copied them faithfully, developing a technique that became his iconic style of making miniature versions of artworks.
RICHARD PETTIBONE FLAGS
Richard Pettibone is one of the central figures of the discourse on Appropriation Art, which developed out of the Pop Art movement in the early 1960s. At the beginning of his career, Pettibone appropriated the work of artists who were his contemporaries, such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns. As a source for his work, Pettibone used images printed in the pages of Artforum. The artist copied them faithfully, developing a technique that became his iconic style of making miniature versions of artworks.
After 9/11, Pettibone returned to one of his most familiar subjects: Jasper Johns and the American flag. Some image were faithful appropriations of Johns’s work, others elaborate on Johns, or are completely independent from Johns’s work. In this way, Pettibone is once again challenging one of the fundamental concepts of Western art: the idea of authorship and originality. In speaking about his work and the creative process that has guided him throughout his career, Pettibone says, “No matter how accurately you copy something, you can’t get rid of yourself. It’s just always you.” While some may assume that Pettibone faithfully and precisely copies the work of other artists, just at a smaller scale, he also invents new compositions by making subtle variations that reveal his playfulness and intimate understanding of the subject matter. Andy Warhol only made one set of thirty-two Campbell’s Soup Can paintings, first shown at Ferus Gallery in 1962 and now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. However, throughout his career he made Campbell’s Soup Can works in a number of different styles and variations. In his close study of Warhol, Pettibone picked up on this detail and he has made several different sets of thirty-two Campbell’s Soup Cans, each using a different style of soup can.
Pettibone uses humor as a means to respond to personal traumas but, he often takes a more sincere tone when addressing collective grief. Pettibone was scheduled to have a solo exhibition at a gallery in New York in October 2001 when tragedy struck on September 11th. New York Cityand America as we knew it, changed overnight. Pettibone was just weeks from installing his show when he felt compelled to respond to the attacks in some way. After 9/11, the American flag immediately became a ubiquitous symbol of solace and unity, hung outside homes and businesses, sewn on sports jerseys, even stretched across entire football fields. In his own gesture of unity, Pettibone painted Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 1958, rendering the image on a single flat canvas for the first time, with faux shadows.
The artist donated the painting to a benefit for the victims of 9/11, but before doing so he produced inkjet prints of the painting on white photo paper, which he signed and stamped, “SEP 11 2001.” Feeling a need to connect with loved ones, Pettibone mailed these inkjet prints to select friends and family.
Pettibone continued to process life after 9/11 with more paintings of flags. In an exhibition at Castelli Gallery in 2003, Pettibone exhibited three Flag paintings made in 2002, all flat single canvases. Two were Three Flags, Vertical paintings and one was Four Flags, Vertical, #2. This group represents the first time that Pettibone made paintings of flags oriented vertically, with the stars in the top left corner. The American flag is normally displayed horizontally, but the vertical orientation has a somber connotation and is often used in memorial contexts. Johns never made a Flag painting with four stacked canvasesand Pettibone’s clever invention offered a much needed moment of comedic relief with viewers questioning their own art historical knowledge.
Nearly twenty years after 9/11, coincidence and collective grief has brought Pettibone back to the image of the flag. After painting several Three Flags, Vertical paintings in 2020–2021, inspired by his own works, Pettibone moved to other flag paintings that more directly copy Johns’s works. The first is a group of three paintings titled, Jasper Johns, ‘Two Flags’, Silkscreen, 1974, which depict the image of Johns’s silkscreen of two vertical flags side by side. While a silkscreen on paper doesn’t have the dimensionality to cast a shadow, like a canvas does, Pettibone still adds a faux shadow that conforms with the other works. At first glance they are undoubtedly reminiscent of Jasper Johns’s iconic Three Flags, 1958, only turned on its side. Had Pettibone simply rotated Johns’s painting 90 degrees clockwise, the stars would be in the top right position. Instead, he makes a subtle change by flipping the composition so that the stars appear on the left side, the proper way to display the American flag when hung vertically. Johns depicted the flag vertically in other works, like Two Flags, 1974, a silkscreen depicting two vertical flags side by side. Thus, Pettibone’s Three Flags, Vertical is actually a hybrid of two different Johns works, a composition that Johns never made. Pettibone always specifies the artist and artwork he is appropriating in the titles of his works, but since this composition is a Pettibone invention, the title is simply Three Flags, Vertical.
One of the many joys of viewing Pettibone works is comparing his versions to the originals, to try and find the similarities and differences. The scale is always the most obvious, but the subtleties of material and imagery make the works feel almost like a puzzle wanting to be solved. While noticing small differences is entertaining, these art historical riddles perhaps mask the deeper underlying aspects of the works. Like any joke or riddle, there is more than meets the eye. For exam- ple, upon close inspection, one might discover that the Three Flags, Vertical paintings all vary slightly in scale, while the other works conform to a precise and uniform size as Pettibone’s work often does. This is a notable deviation and, given the memorializing context, might lead to an interpretation of how each life lost is unique. When asked why they all vary slightly in size, the artist replied, “oh I was just trying out different things.” While this may be the case, Pettibone’s history of highly intentional scaling betrays the offhandedness of his comment.
