In 1954 the young New York artist Jasper Johns produced an image of the American flag after dreaming of it. He used encaustic, oil paint, and collage on fabric pasted on plywood. The resulting image is identical to the original but appears texturally different. These subtle differences lend meaning to Johns's image, but no one, incuding Johns himself, can say what that meaning is.
This is one of my favorite paintings of all time, and I'll always have a framed copy of it in my living space. I love the fact that it's the 48-star flag, which was the flag of my early youth, back before the fake states Alaska and Hawaii were added. How can they be states? They're not even connected to the rest.
In those days we spoke of "the 48 States" and said "One nation indivisible."
Today my Jasper Johns flag lives above the bathtub. When I'm in the tub I see it backward in the mirror, where it becomes the perfect symbol for our backward, semi-civilized nation, the only developed, fully industrialized country without comprehensive public health care.
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