I agree that there is something in this to do with the different disciplinary or institutional requirements of curators, critics and historians of art. I’m not clear what it is, but I’d like to explore that. Maybe there’s a post that either or both of us might write at some point.

I’d say that validity doesn’t mean that only one interpretation can be valid. It does, though, imply a theory of meaning as correspondence between a statement and a pre-existing reality. I think that art historians rightly need to hold to some version of this; possibly critics too, but not necessarily. It might be that more and more curators nowadays work, instead, with a pragmatist theory of meaning: meaning as use. Rightly or wrongly, we tend to ask: what can be done with this artwork and by whom? There is still argument, persuasion, agreement and disagreement, including about what counts as misuse.

It’s true that trying to maintain the artwork’s openness and possibility is becoming part of the curator’s job, in museums at least. In the past, curators and art historians were not so different. There’s a lot that can be said about that divergence, how it came about, and its consequences.

You’re still going to want to know why I found the State dept’s use of Flag interesting. By being a flag, Flag invites use. By being a painting of one, it invites reflection on the uses to which the flag, and itself (both as flag and art), are put. In the Visa Section and the Ambassador’s office, it seems to be doing both at the same time.

Johns’ flag paintings have been positioned in different ways and made to serve seemingly opposing ideological purposes. This your post demonstrates. But why does it follow that the character of the painting is its commendable undecidability? This cliché that the very best artworks suspend us in some ecstasy of ambiguity, the idea that it would be “impossible to say” what a work might mean in its ensemble of conditions – this is what I find oppressive. It is possible not only to say, but to argue, to persuade, and to agree.

@ John, I wonder if there aren’t disciplinary differences at work here – if the curator must maintain at all costs the artwork’s “openness and possibility,” while the critic and historian must insist that works are finite and decidable.

Doesn’t Flag, the the Stars and Stripes itself, leave open all possible responses, not just interpretations? In other words, does not Johns enteratin the idea that the painting, as both image and representation, will be as meaningless to many of his viewers as the flag may be? You may see nationalism or citizenship while all I see is a cliche or a hoody.

It seems to me that what the Embassy gets right is the fact that it is a representation, not of artistic choices, but of perceptual ones. What does this flag mean to you? How does it manifest itself? The State Dept. may be a manifestation of US power abroad but it only operates through the perception of American sovereignty

but my favorite american flags are childe hassam’s

http://blogs.princeton.edu/wri152-3/s06/jedelste/

Equanimity is also a good word for what it has. Is it a ‘committed’ work, in anything like the sense of 1930s Realism (i.e. engaged with a practical project for social change)? I don’t find it to be so. Wagner selects carefully (and that’s fine) which Flags to discuss, she focuses a lot on those with collaged newspaper elements, creating a kind of underlay of fragments of social life. She wants to say that the flag design strait-jackets the sheer “EVERYTHING-ness” of American society (quoting Jack Kerouac on Robert Frank’s The Americans) that the collages depict. The SFMOMA Flag (and others in the series) does not have these elements. That connection to social life is not essential to the Flag series.

Does she ‘get it right’, to use your phrase (and her phrase too)? Put it this way, I find that she says persuasive things about certain of Johns’ Flags, which are supported by my experience of those paintings, and that meet the needs of her political commitment. Is it valid? I wouldn’t use that word. Validation is for visas.

It’s less that I have a reading that I aim to “share” – not enough scare-quotes in the world for that verb – but that I wanted to argue against your idea “there are many (valid) interpretations of Flag.” The paintings place limits on how one might understand them, precisely in their form and subject matter. Some readings have attended to these limits, forms and subjects; others haven’t.

Wagner’s does, for example – and in attending to those matters, she gets at what is specifically political about the work. (A hacked up version is here: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_3_45/ai_n27100818/?tag=content;col1 – you’ll notice she makes your Frank comparison in the first paragraph). Hers is a committed viewpoint. But – and this is my only point – so is yours, in its self-conscious equanimity. Do you REALLY think that the Visa office got something right about Johns? And if so, what in the world do you think they were saying with it? Perhaps some cynical version of, “America tolerates many viewpoints…”

For sure, there are many interpretations of Flag, and the meaning of the work (not “Johns’ meaning”, remember), seems different from different perspectives. Its a work that seems able to support various agendas and needs, including those of art historians. Do you have a perspective, an interpretation that you’d like to share?

Having to think about Johns’ Flag this week, for this blog and the talk, I find myself connecting it with two other works which, quite by chance, I’m looking at right now. One is Robert Frank’s photo series The Americans, which is also at SFMOMA, and was produced around the same time as Johns’ first Flags, and which includes half a dozen US flags (e.g. in #17 “Fourth of July: Jay, New York, 1954). The Americans, as a whole is one of my favorite artworks. The other is Richard Ford’s amazing novel Independence Day, which I just happen to be halfway through. I don’t know what the connections are. It is something to do with being factual in America. I doubt I’ll work it out by tomorrow.

We shouldn’t be too trusting of Johns’ own pronouncements on this subject (though the amused irony in the quote with which you begin should tell us something). While it may be hard to say whether Johns was for or against the symbol itself – what would it mean, anyways, to be “against” a sign? – it certainly is possible to make convincing claims about the artwork’s consideration of American politics and hegemony, to argue for and decide what the flag series might mean, to decide upon how it addressed the politics of its moment. One might look to Benjamin Buchloh’s reading of the works (in Neo-Avant-Garde and Culture Industry, 2000); or J.M. Bernstein’s (in New Left Review, 1997); or, in particular, Anne Wagner’s reading of it as a “realist” work in her essay, “According to What” (Artforum, 2006). One could say that it is only from a certain perspective, or view of politics, that Johns’ meaning becomes impossible to guess.