When the information broke that an upside-down American flag, a protest image carried by the Jan. 6 rioters, had flown above the house of a Supreme Court docket justice, some noticed it as an indication of how badly the courtroom had been corrupted. Others noticed it as an indication of how badly the information media had been corrupted. For me, the unfurling scandal was a testomony to the enduring expressive energy of flags.
Based on Justice Samuel Alito, the choice by his spouse, Martha-Ann, to hoist that inverted commonplace was an expression of misery over a private battle with a neighbor. Quickly it emerged that she had flown one other provocative flag, the Pine Tree flag. And later, caught on a secret recording, Mrs. Alito expressed indignation over the sight of one more flag, the rainbow Satisfaction flag. She fantasized aloud about conveying her disapproval by way of, amazingly, one other flag, one in all her personal invention that may bear the Italian phrase for disgrace.
It’s exceptional to me how, in a desacralized and image-saturated period, these easy units can nonetheless encourage such intense ardour. It’s additionally exceptional how versatile they are often as symbols. That is very true of the American flag, whose crimson, white and blue is as laden with that means as it’s contestable.
That flag is extra seen on the anniversary of the nation’s founding than on another day of the yr. It’s in entrance of presidency buildings, within the palms of parade-goers, within the home windows of outlets and eating places. Will probably be worn on T-shirts, burned in protest and sculpted in cake frosting. It’s a seeming expression of unanimity, however everybody brings to the flag a distinct set of associations. And so they’re all proper.
The Pine Tree flag, which had its origins within the Revolutionary Warfare, had been just lately claimed by Black Lives Matter protesters and Christian theocrats alike earlier than it was brandished on the steps of the Capitol by Jan. 6 rioters.
Even flags whose that means appears unambiguous can tackle completely different textures relying upon who’s flying them and why. The rainbow stripes of the Satisfaction flag has lengthy been a L.G.B.T.Q. image, however as newer renditions appeared, including stripes and symbols to indicate racial variety, transgender identification and a broader spectrum of sexuality, the unique can, in sure contexts, be considered as downright conservative.
The American flag, which Mrs. Alito flew the other way up, is well our most potent nationwide image. The Pledge of Allegiance is addressed to it, and our nationwide anthem is a paean to its endurance. The flag was born out of America’s revolution, surged in reputation through the Civil Warfare, and was belatedly standardized some years earlier than the nation entered World Warfare I.
Nearly all probably the most well-known depictions emerge from wartime, from Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware” to Joe Rosenthal’s 1945 {photograph} displaying Marines elevating the flag on Iwo Jima. In 1954, utilizing a combination of wax and colour on scraps of newspaper, Jasper Johns sharply pulled the banner a distinct course. His “Flag” stripped the Stars and Stripes of its quick connotations, turning it into an object whose very familiarity made it inscrutable. Mr. Johns would return to the flag dozens of instances, and every rendering took on a brand new tone: “White Flag” is elegiac, “Three Flags” is playful and confrontational, “Flag” (1994) is contemplative.
The flag’s capability to include a number of meanings grew to become apparent within the Nineteen Sixties. Civil rights activists used it to stake a declare to America’s guarantees of freedom and equality; the white supremacists who beat and threatened them below the identical banner laid declare to an opposing set of American guarantees. The flag is layered sufficient to be carried by each.
The antiwar motion at instances held the flag aloft as a hopeful image of peace. Different instances, the flag was inverted in dissent, or burned as a denunciation.
In 1966, Marc Morrel, a Marine Corps veteran, introduced a sequence of sculptures incorporating the American flag. Sure with rope or wound in chains, the strangled flags strongly advised corpses. Mr. Morrel’s suggestion of an unfree and decaying America got here to the eye of the New York police and the gallery proprietor who exhibited it was finally convicted of “casting contempt” on the flag. (The conviction was overturned in 1974.)
In 1968, Abbie Hoffman, an activist and provocateur, was the primary individual arrested — for a flag shirt he wore to reply questions earlier than the Home Committee on Un‐American Actions — below a brand new federal legislation towards flag desecration. His conviction was overturned on attraction, and over the subsequent couple of a long time, the Supreme Court docket would repeatedly defend individuals’s proper to make use of the flag to precise themselves. In any case, it belongs to them.
In 1969, Neil Armstrong took his iconic {photograph} of Buzz Aldrin with the American flag on the moon. The identical yr, to assist elevate cash for the antiwar motion, Mr. Johns created “Moratorium,” a misery sign that inverted the flag another way. He rendered it in orange, inexperienced and black so {that a} viewer who seemed on the white dot on the heart of the flag for a minute, after which at a white wall, noticed an afterimage of the Stars and Stripes restored to their acquainted colours.
The chameleonic banner nonetheless has a mysterious energy to incite and thrill, categorical and confuse. In my lounge hangs a poster of Mr. Johns’s “Flag.” Behind me as I write is a poster of the Iranian American artist Sara Rahbar’s meditative 2008 piece “Flag #19 (Recollections With out Recollection),” which layers the flag with new that means by collaging over its stripes with textiles and tassels, affixing buttons and medals. Ms. Rahbar’s piece means that the flag’s many layers can coexist with the complexity of her personal biography.
It’s a reminder of the way in which the flag, already saturated with the connotations of its historical past, nonetheless has room to bear extra meanings. And maybe right here the rationale for its enduring energy: Solely an abstraction can maintain collectively America’s myriad contradictions — or not less than has an opportunity to.
