Flags of Revolt and Defiance: Polly Apfelbaum

Flags are to be seen clearly from the distance of the moon, but Polly Apfelbaum’s Flags of Revolt and Defiance (2006) are sharply cut away from their traditional field. A folio of vivid silkscreens on paper, blossom templates are taken to flags of resistance ranging from the Bourbons to the Black Panthers. These templates lend themselves to the logo - typically identified more with a corporate brand than with the explicitly political communication of a flag. In collaboration with Tomas Vu-Daniel and his assistants at the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies, Apfelbaum’s exacting precision in this medium (a precision that required two years of effort) heightens the intensity of color. Their cut of line is completely different than the bleed of color Apfelbaum is most known for, but the hold upon the viewer is no less saturating.

That these flags are intended to be hung vertically on the wall also shifts them from their horizontal register, further emphasizing the graphic field of the logo. Tacked to the wall at the top two corners and lined in rows, their presentation mimics that of a logo design exploration, as in the c. 2000 ExxonMobil example below. In viewing Flags of Revolt and Defiance, however, there is no acceptance or rejection on the basis of a desired unifying concept.

I have always associated Apfelbaum’s work with a powerful phenomenological insistence upon the materialism of direct experience, and this insistence occurs most forcefully in the horizontal field. According to the official code, a flag must never touch the ground. That a flag should have both avoidance of and claim upon the ground as what constitutes it places Flags of Revolt and Defiance in an important dialogue with what Apfelbaum refers to as her “fallen paintings.” Standing at the edges of a piece like Blossom (2001), currently on exhibit at Locks Gallery in Philadelphia , your own body defines the impermanence in the actual fragility of velvet petals laid upon the floor, and is at the same time held by the absorption of their color stains. The immediacy of “one shot painting” has been taken over and fleshed out at our feet in an array that summons the discretion of touch.

In the early ‘80s Apfelbaum was in Spain, away from the New York art scene at a time when cynicism had crept into painterly practice. While Douglas Crimp wrote “The End of Painting,” Apfelbaum was learning from Arte Povera and Supports/Surfaces that the conventions of painting and its exhibition remained quite full. More recently she began to think explicitly about horizontality and verticality as different registers in dialogue with each other.

What space does the logo occupy? There have always been the occasional artists to use a personal logo in the place of signature, such as Leonardo’s flying eyeball, or Whistler’s butterfly. And since Andy Warhol, numerous artists have appropriated corporate logos into their work. In 1968, Richard Artschwager, like Apfelbaum occupying a space somewhere between Minimalism and Pop, began to distribute his blips across a variety of architectural surfaces. But these were of a time that emphasized local incident as much as the more abstract mobility of a logo across a variety of surfaces. For Arstchwager, there was also the psychic effect of horizontal and vertical format - formats owing the force of their address to the difference between landscape and portraiture. When Apfelbaum flips her flags from the horizontal to the vertical register, she is also thinking of this psychic address, and at a time when the personal logo is all the rage.

For a while now I have been thinking about the increasing mobility of art. People first began talking about this when the international art star appeared, moving from site to site to install a project. The distinction between artist and curator increasingly blurred in this context. As the market for contemporary art accelerated, the walls between the museum and the market became permeable in the speed and fluidity of movement. Further, since Murakami’s collaboration with Louis Vuitton in 2003 an artwork has the mobility of a logo across a variety of surfaces. This is apparent in The Gap t-shirt campaign, and we can see it now in Google’s artist theme.

Google’s artist’s themes are a new feature for the personalized home page that, from a list of artist’s names, provides an artist's work as the banner backdrop to the Google search bar. The work of art will change over the course of the day - it is a fragment without title, known only by the proper name of the artist. And the artist’s names will range from Jeff Koons to Lance Armstrong, a bizarre blurring that can only come from the notion of art as simultaneously popular and distinctively elite - a marketer’s dream.

I can think of no artist other than Polly Apfelbaum who in Flags of Defiance and Revolt has critically inhabited the structure and history of the logo as an enterprise. At the same time, few have so critically occupied the horizontal field, exploiting the difference of its register from the vertical as a dialogue with the different aspects of each and their corresponding histories. In considering how firmly these registers can stand apart in her work, I asked Apfelbaum if she thought that while her floor pieces should not appear on Google’s theme palette, her Flags of Revolt and Defiance might have a different relation to mobility and make absolute sense there. The artist agreed.

It used to be that the autonomy of painting in the vertical register was challenged by the threat of becoming wallpaper. In our time, this threat is as likely to be seen as an invitation without challenge. In responding to the visual culture of the logo and its mobility, Flags of Revolt and Defiance positions art’s relation to visual culture in critical dialogue, rather than choosing between flight or embrace.

Image credits:Polly Apfelbaum, Portfolio Title: Flags of Revolt and Defiance, 2006, Color silkscreen, Paper Size: 30 x 19 inches each panel, Carrier: Coventry Rag, smooth, bright white, Edition Size: 27, Portfolio of 31, Courtesy of Leroy Neiman Center for Print Studies; Exxon/Mobil logo presentation, c. 2000, private collection; Bubbles, 2001, synthetic velvet and fabric dye, 12 ft in diameter, Courtesy Locks Gallery, Philadelphia; Richard Artschwager, blips, 1976, Photo by Matthew, Septimus, Courtesy P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center; Pollly Apfelbaum, Flags of Revoltand Defiance - Yippies; Polly Apfelbaum, Flags of Revolt and Defiance - Kurdistan Worker's party; AT&T logo exploration, private collection.

By Catherine Spaeth

Catherine Spaeth