As the United States of America celebrates Independence Day, the country drapes itself in the red, white and blue of the American flag. As a potent symbol of national pride and ‘Americanness’, the flag became a recurrent subject in the work of one Cold War painter as he questioned his response to political events. Jasper Johns was part of a new wave of young American … Continue reading Jasper Johns’ Un-American Flag
On 2 May 1957 the notorious Republican senator Joseph McCarthy died. Throughout the 1950s, McCarthy’s virulent brand of anti-communism terrorised and stultified US society, leading many innocent people to lose their livelihoods and driving some to suicide. At the height of the McCarthyist witch-hunts the senator even threw accusations of communist infiltration at the US State Department, the Truman administration, Voice of America and the US … Continue reading The Revenge of the Blacklisted Artist
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