Where can I see Three Flags?

It's at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. The Whitney paid $1 million in 1980, a record at the time for a living American artist.

What technique did Johns use?

Johns used encaustic, a technique mixing pigment with hot wax, over collaged newspaper. The wax dries almost instantly, preserving each brushstroke's texture and creating a rich, layered surface.

Why is this painting important?

Three Flags helped bridge Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. By painting a familiar, flat symbol rather than expressing inner emotions, Johns challenged the art world's assumptions about what painting could be.

Where Is Three Flags? Museum Location

Jasper Johns created Three Flags in 1958 using his signature technique of encaustic (pigmented hot wax) over newspaper collage on canvas. Three American flags are stacked in decreasing size, the smallest projecting outward from the surface. The result is both flat and three-dimensional, a painting that's also a relief sculpture.

Johns chose the flag because it's already flat and two-dimensional: a ready-made design that let him focus on the act of painting itself rather than depicting something from life. By repeating and scaling it, he turned a patriotic symbol into a formal problem about surface, depth, and perception.

The painting hangs at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The Whitney purchased it in 1980 for $1 million, then a record for a living American artist. Johns's flags, targets, and numbers helped launch Pop Art and challenged Abstract Expressionism's dominance in the late 1950s.

Three Flags

Details

Where to See It

Also at Whitney Museum of American Art

Dempsey and Firpo

About Three Flags

Own Art Like This