Jasper Johns "Three Flags" Postcard

$3.00 at Whitney Museum of American Art.

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In 1954, Jasper Johns began painting what would become one of his signature emblems: the American flag. As an iconic image--comparable to the targets, maps, and letters that he also has depicted--Johns realized that the flag was “seen and not looked at, not examined.” The execution and composition of Three Flags elicit close inspection by the viewer. The painting draws attention to the process of its making through Johns’s use of encaustic, a mixture of pigment suspended in warm wax that congeals as each…