PRESENTATION:Flags

Flags hold a constant place in art, from classical historical painting to contemporary installations. With the juxtaposition of their strips of colored fabrics, flags have stimulated painters with their qualities for abstraction, well before abstract art preferred chromatic fields to the representation of reality. Tricolor or monochrome, each color or combination of colors immediately evokes references that we find repeatedly in artistic creation.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Boghossian Foundation Archive

The group exhibition “Flags” explores the question of territory, multiple identities and intercultural dialogue. Their political and symbolic resonance has been the primary pretext for including flags in works of art. A flag can serve to represent a nation, to celebrate a victory or the conquest of a territory, but also to symbolize and defend a cause.  A flag being a sacred object, the voluntary destruction of a country’s flag is seen as a highly subversive act punishable by law, while the pattern of its colors is recorded in national constitutions.  But a flag is also an object, a frontal icon for Jasper Johns, a module for filling space in Daniel Buren’s installations, an image with multiple meanings for Marcel Broodthaers, etc. It is these and many other uses of flags in modern and contemporary art that this exhibition seeks to bring together in a transnational course of exchanges and confrontations. This exhibition complements with the exhibition entitled “Mappa Mundi”. Both exhibitions focus on motifs closely linked to our relationship to the world, its geography, and international exchanges. Their place in the realm of art is sufficiently extensive to justify two parallel exhibitions. The world map serves as an invitation to travel and an inexhaustible source of imagination. For artists, the map offers a pretext for all manner of interpretations and observations on society, power relationships, conflicts, the environment, etc. Often associated with national identity – a concern that artists seldom address except in specific circumstances – flags are testimony to historical events and civic activism, and, just like maps, they appeal through their visual and aesthetic quality. Flags also occupy a consistent place in art, from monumental historical paintings to contemporary installations. In fact, both projects merely touch on the subject matter, simply drawing on an abundance of images to demonstrate its richness. Painters, draughtsmen, and photographers retrace its presence. Likewise, the flag represents the appropriation of a territory. But the simple juxtaposition of strips of colored fabric also stimulated artists through its abstractive quality, even before abstract art began focusing on chromatic fields instead of representing reality. Two-colored, tricolored or monochrome flags, bearing signs and images or not: from the outset, every color or combination of colors conjures up references that will be repeated in art. Moreover, the flexibility of the fabric, which contrasts with the rigidity of a painted canvas or the rigidity of a sculpture, is admirably suited to installations in space, as Daniel Buren has repeatedly demonstrated, and once more on this occasion. Whether an almost perfect abstract figure or a signifying object, the flag has many different uses and stirs the imagination of artists. It constitutes an infinitely versatile theme, both in terms of representation and as an element sus-pended in space and suitable for all kinds of settings. Ellsworth Kelly – whose sharp eye knew how to detect a formal structure in architecture or urban décor – noted that Raoul Dufy’s “La Rue pavoisée” was a simple geometric composition exhibited by the flag stretched out in front of the center of the canvas. Looking at Ellsworth Kelly’s paintings, one can easily grasp why this detail, detached from the rest of the composition, held his attention. French and American flags feature in numerous artistic creations, presumably because of their very substantial history, both in terms of their ties to politics and history, as well as their emblematic presence beyond the nation they e-body. Yet, the colors of the Belgian flag are not overlooked in Wim Delvoye’s use of the Flemish community crest on ironing boards.

Works by: Marina Abramovic, Saâdane Afif, Gordana Andjelic-Galic, Diane Arbus, Micha Bar-Am, Bruno Barbey, Nú Barretto, Pierre Bismuth, Alighiero Boetti, Marcel Broodthaers, Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Daniel Buren, René Burri, Mircea Cantor, Léon Cogniet, Roger de La Fresnaye, Wim Delvoye, Edith Dekyndt, Gustave de Smet, Raoul Dufy, Mounir Fatmi, Michel François, Stuart Franklin, Gérard Fromanger, John Gerrard, Gilbert & George, David Hammons, Keith Haring, Childe Hassam, Thomas Hoepker, Jonathan Horowitz, Jasper Johns, Nikita Kadan, Evgueni Khaldeï, Kimsooja, Robert Longo, George Maciunas, Peter Marlow, Susan Meiselas, Jonathan Monk, Adolphe Mouilleron, Claes Oldenburg, Martin Parr, Peybak, Pablo Picasso, Sara Rahbar, Jean-Pierre Raynaud, Marc Riboud, Faith Ringgold, Joe Rosenthal, Yara Said, Franck Scurti, Thomas Schütte, Andres Serrano, Sturtevant, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Larry Towell,  Danh Vo, Gustave Wappers, Andy Warhol.

Photo: Marina Abramovic, The Hero, 2001, Courtesy Boghossian Foundation

Info: Curator:  Alfred Pacquement, Boghossian Foundation, Villa Empain, Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 67, Brussels, Belgium, Duration: 29/9/2022-22/1/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.villaempain.com/