Common Themes, Different Feelings

this assignment I have chosen works of art whose subject matter depicts the American flag. They are as follows: the Marine Corps War Memorial, by Felix W. de Weldon in 1954. Three Flags, by Jasper Johns in 1958, and God Bless America, by Faith Ringgold in 1964.(Sayre,2005) Through this essay it will be shown that even though there is a common theme, the American Flag, the meanings, thoughts and feelings evoked are very different.

Felix W. de Weldon was an Austrian born American sculpture who, among his many works of art world wide, created the Marine Corps War Memorial, also commonly called the Iwo Jima Memorial located in Arlington Virginia.

Weldon was already a well known artist and was serving in the Navy at the time the original photograph was taken of these Marines and a Navy Corpsman raising the flag on top of Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima. Weldon was so moved the first time that he saw the picture and event taking place, that he constructed a scale model , and the soon after a life size model of the scene.(HQMC 2006)

Congress later commissioned Weldon to create the Memorial as we see it today. The sculpture, done in the realist style, is massive, the figures are thirty-two feet high and they are shown erecting a sixty foot flagpole with a cloth flag. The all bronze sculpture stands upon a base made of rough Swedish granite that is emblazoned in gold with the names and dates of every relevant Marines battle since 1775. (NPS, 2006)

Jasper John's Three Flags (1958) was painted at a time when Americans were obsessed with patriotism. Spurred by the McCarthy anti-communist hearings in the Senate a few years before, and fueled by President Eisenhower's affirmation of all things American and compounded by the Soviet Unions challenge of America and its supremacy. (Sayre, 2005) According to Johns, that is exactly what inspired him to create this work, the idea that Americans see the flag, but have not looked at, not examined it. (Sayre, 2005)

Done in the abstract expressionist style, this piece is created using three independent and separately painted flags on canvas. These flags, each smaller than the previous are painted in an ancient form known as encaustic, a form of painting involving colored molten waxes. (Encaustic, 2006) Starting with the largest painting the pictures are bolted together in descending order. In doing this, the "single" painting is over five inches thick, and give a new dimension to the viewer.

"Faith Ringgold's piece, God Bless America (1964), is an example of the artist's political and social criticisms of the United States. The title, identical to that of a patriotic U.S. song, serves as ironic to the commentary expressed in the art work. The artist uses only the colors