5. Jasper Johns – White Flag 1955
Johns’ early mature work, of the mid- to late 1950s, invented a new style that helped to engender a number of subsequent art movements, among them Pop, Minimal, and Conceptual art. White Flag is the largest of Johns’s flag paintings and the first in which the flag is presented in monochrome. The work is painted on three separately stretched panels of cotton: the star area, the seven upper stripes to the right of the stars, and the longer stripes below. The artist built up the stars, the negative areas around them, and the stripes with applications of collage. Johns then dipped these into molten beeswax and adhered them to the surface. He then joined the three panels and over-painted them with more beeswax mixed with pigments, adding touches of white oil. This great monochrome remained in the artist’s own collection until it was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum in 1998. One of the Johns’ Flags Fetched $36 Million At Sotheby’s late last year.