A Discussion of Four Monuments

Jasper Johns' 1958 painting Three Flags takes a patriotic symbol, the flag, and "divest[s] it of its original symbolic and conventional usage," instead "transform[ing] it into data for examining perception, visual ambiguity, and the meaning of art itself" (Sims). Johns' flags here are "not the wavy, windblown banner of flagpoles and parades, but the flat, rigid flag characteristic of American folk art and craft" (Sims). Here, the flag is a visual play that shows the flag diminishing in size(and metaphorically in importance(from back to front. The flag is not a symbol of America, its soldiers, or its heartfelt honor and patriotism; it is merely a picture of flags for their visual interest. Johns explains, "There may or may not be an idea, and the meaning may just be that the painting exists" ("Jasper Johns").

The Vietnam Memorial Wall by Maya Ying Lin, by contrast, is abounding with meaning. The wall serves as a visual representation of the more than 58,000 male and female soldiers who died or were

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