Last modified: 2025-04-26 by rick wyatt
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A painting showing the US flag upside down can be seen at www.pem.org/archives/mpd/images/l1207.jpg.
Page 8 of "Marine Paintings and Drawings in the Peabody Essex Museum".
Caption:
"Roux, Francois Geoffroi ( French [1811-1882] )
1207 Ship POLAND Burning at Sea
Watercolor 20 3/4 x 27 1/2 in., signed: Fcois Roux Marseille, 1860.
Flag upside down in distress, May 1840."
Interestingly, the 'P' flag (for the ship's name?) is kept flying in the normal way.
Jan Mertens, 21 June 2005
An article describing the CSA battle flag being used in a piece of art.
Link: news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/confederate-flag-exhibit-ignites-uproar/20070317223509990002?ncid=NWS00010000000001
Text of article:
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (March 17) - When artist John Sims sees the Confederate flag, he sees "visual terrorism," and a symbol of a racist past. When Robert Hurst sees the flag, he is filled with pride as the descendant of a soldier who fought for the South during the Civil War. Their differences have flared into a war of words, catching a local museum in the
middle.
Hurst walked into the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science this past week and saw an exhibit by Sims, including a Confederate flag hung from a noose on a 13-foot gallows in a display titled "The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag." Hurst asked the museum to remove the display, along with 13 other pieces by Sims. The museum, however, announced Friday it is standing by Sims' work, on display since Feb. 26, because it wants to inspire dialogue in the community about a symbol that engenders a diversity of strong responses. "There's a balance between the nature
of the art that we show and the outcome that we seek, which is to promote dialogue and conversation, and have you maybe think of something in a slightly different way," said Chucha Barber, the museum's executive director.
Hurst, commander of the local Sons of Confederate Veterans chapter, said Friday he has lost respect for the museum, calling the display of Sims' work "offensive, objectionable and tasteless. They're alienating a large portion of the population around here," Hurst said. "Maybe they just wanted to cause some controversy." He called Sims an "irrelevant individual" with no artistic talent. There are some people who have great talent, and they rely on that talent to be successful. There are others who don't have great talent, and they have to rely on a gimmick," Hurst said.Sims responded that he's about as irrelevant as the Constitution.
Florida statutes say it's unlawful to "deface, defile or contemptuously abuse" the Confederate flag, but say
it's also illegal to prevent the display of the flag "for decorative or patriotic purposes."
Terence Martin, 18 March 2007
![[U.S. flag]](../images/u/us!bw.gif)
![[U.S. flag]](../images/u/us!rw.gif)
The work "Exploded View", by artist Thomas Starr, was part of the AIGA "We
The Designers" exhibit held at Northeastern University, in Boston, Mass. It
consists of two variant design U.S. flags and the (unintentionally?)
provocative titles fizzes out on inspection: This is not about some type of
extreme case of flag burning using explosives but rather makes use of the
graphic arts term "to explode" meaning "to disassemble" - as one of the flags
shows only the stripes and the other only the starry canton, each flag not
including the other’s detail.
It's interesing to see that the artist
considered the white stars to be not additional elements added on top of the
canton’s surface (which is the heraldry-informed perspective of most, I
suppose), but rather star-shaped holes in the blue element, through which the
neutral white background can be seen. I suspect this view is in turn informed
by the printing arts, and indeed these two designs side-by-side are reminiscent
of printing plates for use in direct-color serigraphy or other such technique.
A photo of this installation at
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/6d/37/fb/6d37fb211f50fbb897a1e728c747e58c.jpg
(resp. archived url and its original, likely volatile). The context page [https://www.pinterest.com/pin/63472675975724138]
is in Pinterest and as usual for this site, unlogged visitors cannot see most
of the posted info.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 15 March 2025
The exhibition was in December 2011. There's some more information about the
"exploded flags" plus photo here:
https://huntnewsnu.com/18399/campus/flags-in-international-village-spark-student-furor/
James Dignan, 16 March 2025
