above: detail from Dave Cole's American flag made of melted toy soldiers and paint.
In honor of this year's Fourth of July, I'm sharing with you some artistic interpretations of the United States National Flag. However, I can't write a post on modern art and American flags without mentioning Jasper Johns, the artist whose modern paintings of American Flags are known throughout the world, the most famous of which is shown below:
above: Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 1959
Now, a selection of America's Stars and Stripes, aka Old Glory, as assemblages made with everything from Greek beach pebbles to bike chains.
American flag made of melted and painted plastic toy soldiers by artist Dave Cole:
American flag made of toy soldiers by Valerie Leonard:
American flag made of eyeglasses and ephemera by artist David Datuna:
American flags made of license plates by Aaron Foster:
American Flag made of Cooperstown baseball bats cut in half for wall mounting. Available here or on ebay:
Converse created American flags made of red, white and blue high-tops for several of their stores worldwide. The images below are from their Soho, Dusseldorf and Berlin stores:
American flag made of beach pebbles on the shores of Cyprus, courtesy of Hans2568:
Artist Cameron Gray has created mosaics of the American flag from oil paintings of food on 2 x 3 wood tiles. (and this one from erotic photography too graphic to show on this blog):
American flag made of reclaimed bicycle chains by ReGeared on etsy:
Giant Lego American Flags (for both the Nixon Library and Disneyworld):
above photo courtesy of mynico76 on flickr
above photo courtesy of Gotham Guy on flickr
above photo courtesy of Disney Dan on flickr
And lastly, I love these composites of modern chairs making up the American flag made by Design Within Reach and sent out as e-mails to their customers:
UPDATE! I just received this year's DWR flag composition made with Adirondack chairs and here it is:
Related links of interest:
• US Flag Rules and Regulations
• The Flag of the United States on Wikipedia
• A nice article by Kristian Goddard on the Resilience of the Stars and Stripes.
• A website dedicated to the U.S. Flag
• US Flags and Flagpoles
Forever may she wave. Happy Fourth of July!