White Flag

Johns worked on three separately stretched areas of canvas - the 48 stars to the upper left, seven of the thirteen stripes to the upper right, and the remaining six longer stripes below - which were then combined to form a whole. The U.S. flag is depicted in the form it took between 1912 and 1959, with 48 white stars on a blue canton representing the then U.S. states (prior to the admission of Alaska and Hawaii) with thirteen red and white stripes. The stars and stripes are built up as a collage of paper and fabric which were dipped in molten beeswax before being applied to a ground of beeswax. The three collages were then joined together and covered with layer of fast-setting dirty white encaustic (beeswax mixed with white pigment) with highlights added in white oil paint. Johns's rapid brushstrokes are clearly visible in the roughly-finished encaustic medium. The completed work covers the whole of the canvas, with no frame,