Jasper Johns this ain’t
Tucked away in the back of the Wiesner Art Gallery in the student center at MIT is an absolutely delightful exhibit:
(Foreground: American flag, ripped. Reflective lettering on surface: “ALLIES OF EVIL.” Background: American flag. Reflective lettering on surface: “BIN LADEN FOR PRESIDENT.”)
Even better is the artist’s statement:
Protest Flags
These were the confluence of two separate plans - one to dye flags black, in order to convey a very different and unfamiliar visual impression of these well-known icons, and the other to use ‘sacred cloth’ as a medium for other messages, in order to attract more attention. Fortunately, September 11 2001 provided an almost limitless supply of these banners on every street corner, and subsequent manipulation of these events to commit further mass murder for political gain provided a moral imperative to protest. Unfortunately, many variants of the flags did not receive the dye well; I therefore saved the well-dyed ones for their naked visual impact, and applied lettering to the fainter ones. I made several slogans, wearing and carrying them in protests in New York and Boston. My goal was to attract strong initial attention from the visual effect of the lettered flag, but then to act as a challenge by having the slogans be slightly ambiguous and more than slightly provocative, forcing viewers (protester and protested alike) to pause and query whether or not they truly understood and agreed or disagreed with what was being expressed.
(emphasis mine)
The aforementioned dye-dunked flag is here. I couldn’t find the artist’s name anywhere, but I wonder if it’s the same person who was responsible for this high-minded postering campaign:
The text at the bottom reads “Only fascist apologists for war crimes have the instinct to tear down this poster.” (Zoom in to see it.)
Or maybe the artist was behind this campaign, which presumably has something to do with the MIT flag debacle:
In case you missed the punch line, it’s “Flags are a one-way message of hatred.” And, in case you didn’t know, “Flags promote the common misconception that US citizens have the right to free speech.”
(N.B.: I suspect that the second poster was in jest. I’m not so sure about the first. And as to the flags – well, if that’s irony, it’s certainly over my head.)