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Flags as sculptures

[⚓︎]

An essay
Flag Statue in Jersey
Banksy Statue in London

See also:

An essay

Even though not strictly the same thing (since art and sculptures are supposed to make a statement and serve a cultural purpose per se most of the times) I now think of two entries which can relate to physical items (sculptures) displaying flag-related material, and they are:
- Metal Flag on Yom Kippur War Memorial
- Metal Flag at Matan Lookout (Samaria)

It is accepted that Swiss Historian Jacob Burckhardt is "one of the major progenitors of cultural history" (https://www.age-of-the-sage.org/history/historian/Jacob_Burckhardt.html). In the words of Sigfried Giedion, another Swiss Historian: "The great discoverer of the age of the Renaissance (as explained in his book "Die Cultur a der Renaissance in Italien" (1860), translated to English as "Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy" (1878), he first showed how a period should be treated in its entirety, with regard not only for its painting, sculpture and architecture, but for the social institutions of its daily life as well."
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Burckhardt
That is: "the traditional cultural history organized around it ("Geistesgeschichte")(English: Study of the spirit) (which is then the approach to understand the original intention of the idea, its purpose and the reflection of everyday life) (source: "Varieties of Cultural History" (1997) by Peter Burke (https://monoskop.org/images/4/4b/Burke_Peter_Varieties_of_Cultural_History_1997.pdf) p.171

First outlined by German Historian Friedrich von Adelung, the "Kulturgeschichte" (English: Cultural history) in the late XVIIIth century, it emerged in parallel with the Volkskultur (English: People's history) concept.
Sources: "Cultural History and its Neighbors" (conference by British Polymath and Historian Peter Burke) (translated to Spanish as "La historia cultural y sus vecinos" (https://www.scielo.org.mx) (2007)

As Burke also mentioned in his book "Varieties of Cultural History" (1997) (https://monoskop.org/images/4/4b/Burke_Peter_Varieties_of_Cultural_History_1997.pdf ) p.162, it is an approach to explain the "concern with the 'structure' of beliefs as well as their content, in other words with categories, with metaphors and symbols, with how people think as well as what they think. In other words, to assert the existence of a difference in mentalities between two groups is to make a much stronger statement than merely asserting a difference in attitudes".

Now, here is where the two concepts meet: the sculpture as a form of cultural manifestation, proper of its generation, and the flag as the symbol used to propagate an idea, a concept, which as described by regular people in their recorder impressions and commentaries on the Banksy statue as seen in the video shared by Elias actually resonates and explains simply and vividly concepts such as political radicalism in the early XXIst century when using a sculpture that represents a person blinded or blocked by a flag, which could pretty much mean obscured by his own beliefs, given the fact that the flag is a symbol of what the individual stands for, something that represents questions dealing with identity (values, beliefs) both as an individual and as a society, that (at least but not exclusively) most Western (albeit other nations too) countries are today struggling with, as for example U.S. Dr. Dan Shapiro explains in this 2023 short video, pointing to the fact that certain phenomena are commonplace nowadays with globalized societies in dealing with diverse social issues, as also outlined by Israeli Historian Yuval Noah Harari in 2020: "As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first Century, humanity faces so many issues and questions, that it is really hard to know what to focus on"
Source: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2020/01/yuval-hararis-warning-davos-speech-future-predications.
The ability then to have multiple perspectives and approaches to these and other issues (and not just traditional focal points such as "Eurocentric", "American", "Chinese" and/or other traditional schools of thought and/or authors) is what "Weltgeschichte" (English: World history), or more recently "Globalgeschichte" (English: Global history) ) attends to illustrate (source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltgeschichte), a rather recent approach in Historiography with renowned authos such as German Dr. Sebastian Conrad and his seminal work "Globalgeschichte. Eine Einführung" (2013).

As for the recent (XXth century) interest in cultural history, "since World War II, interest in flags has expanded beyond their creation and use. Political scientists, historians, sociologists, and others recognize them as artifacts expressive of the cultures of certain times and places.", which is precisely what we do: "The scholarly study of the history, symbolism, etiquette, design, manufacture, and other aspects of flags is known as vexillology (from the Latin vexillum, “banner”). Such studies are fostered by many publications as well as by the International Federation of Vexillological Associations and its members (including of course FOTW)."
Source: "Encyclopædia Britannica"https://www.britannica.com/topic/flag-heraldry, pioneered in modern times by Dr. Whitney Smith and his prolific research precisely in the early 1960s, something that became more evident with the "cultural turn" experienced in the 1980s and 1990s (source: "Cultural History and its Neighbours", by Peter Burke (2012) (https://www.academia.edu/86240424/Cultural_History_and_its_Neighbours) p.2

Additionally "Cultural studies" researchers often concentrate on how a particular phenomenon relates to matters of ideology, nationality, ethnicity, social class, and/or gender", with the term "coined by Richard Hoggart in 1964 when he founded the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, CCCS (1964-2002)" at the University of Birmingham (sources: https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/ethnic-and-cultural-studies/birmingham-school-centre-contemporary-cultural and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_history).

So all in all the "Flags as sculptures" could well be a category under a much broader research field which is now Vexillology in a then much wider scope of Cultural History.

Esteban Rivera, 3 May 2026

Flag Statue in Jersey

image by Crawford VanHorne, 25 June 2015

The Liberation Sculpture forms the centrepiece of a square on St Helier's waterfront to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Liberation.
See also: https://statues.vanderkrogt.net/object.php?record=je04

Crawford VanHorne, 25 June 2015

Banksy Statue in London

image located by Elias Granqvist, 3 May 2026

Reported on https://www.instagram.com/reel