“In the past two years – as flying the flag on homes, public buildings, opera houses and (momentarily) central Baghdad has become an American enthusiasm – Johns has emerged as the last hope, or maybe the fig leaf, of the ambivalent flag-waver. When a video of the concert for New York after the World Trade Centre attacks was released in this country, Johns’s Flag was on the cover. When New York museums wanted to match the patriotic mood, they displayed not just any flag, but Johns’s flag: Three Flags (1958), a version owned by the Whitney. Ambivalence is his thing. There are few works of art quite so uncertain, so confounding – not just in its values and meaning, but even in its status as an object or a sign – as Jasper Johns’s Flag, made in its most famous version in 1954-55.”