In 1988, a small manmade island off the Dutch coast was animated with an immersive and monumental outdoor contemporary art exhibition – fifty massive 2x3 meter screenprinted flags waving in the breeze. The project was envisioned by the Gran Pavese Foundation, led by Thérèse Legierse, Peter van Beveren, and Ralph van Hesse. The foundation took their name from the Italian nautical phrase gran pavese which refers to the “dressing overall” of a voyaging ship, wherein the vessel is elaborately strung with maritime signal flags for ceremonial or celebratory purposes. Fifty internationally recognized artists were invited to design their own interpretation of a flag, with no thematic concept to unite them all beyond the medium, size and freedom to apply their own imagery and methodology to the project.
The U.S. Navy patrol boat USS Isabel (PY-10) at Hankow, China, dressed overall in honor of the coronation of King George VI of England, May 14, 1937. Image: Naval History and Heritage Command, U.S. Navy Photo, NH 83530
While many artists chosen for the Gran Pavese project were already engaging with the varied iconography and ideology of flags in their practice, the notion of creating a flag itself offered a distinctive set of challenges and possibilities. Like a painting on canvas without a stretcher, the works would eventually embody a certain fluidity, not hanging stagnant on a gallery wall, but billowing freely in the air for all to see. Artists also needed to consider the histories and multifarious meanings endowed in the symbolism of flags such as existence, origin, distinction, authority, territory, loyalty, glory, belief, and identity, amongst other philosophical conceits. With their demonstrated grasps of the extensive significance of the flag form, each of the fifty artists rose to the occasion of the project to create flags that represented a global amalgamation of unique artistic visions, socio-political convictions, and conceptual frameworks – a staggering gran pavese for the contemporary era.
Due to both the individual creative success of each artist and the astounding experience of viewing the outdoor exhibition in its totality, the projectattracted crowds of visitors to the island of Neeltje Jans. Following the Netherlands installation, the project, in all its beauty and scale, travelled the world, gracing the river borders of Frankfurt, the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the Great Wall of China, and beyond. The international tour of 50 monumental flags paid homage to the Gran Pavese Foundation’s seafaring namesake, their various visuals and symbolisms representing a grand celebration of the international art community. “The only art I’m interested in is the art I don’t understand right away. If you understand it right away, it really has no use except as nostalgia.”
—Lawrence Weiner While many participating artists took the imagery for their flag from their self-developed visual language, the conceptual art of Lawrence Weiner often takes the form of language itself. While known for his typographic wall texts in his proprietary font which transform a blank space into a site of poetics, for his Gran Pavese flag, Weiner deployed other symbolic motifs that have appeared throughout his work: squares, crosses, bars, clipped edges, and cut-out holes. These symbols serve as punctuation to his text-based work, visually breaking up his text and adding emphasis. As Weiner places the crosses and bars on his flag, devoid of text and positioned linearly as if they were words themselves forming a sentence, they appear like a paradoxical mathematical equation: square plus square equals two squares plus two squares.
The clipped edges and cut holes make significant appearances as well in Weiner’s prints, where the artist utilized the physicality of the sheet to further emphasize its form. However, the hole – which within the scope of the Gran Pavese project draws a parallel to the flag of Vito Acconci – is where Weiner originally began to his footing as an artist. As Weiner first explored notions of conceptual, language-based artmaking, he initially created works that functioned as descriptions of actions that could be performed to create physical manifestations of art. His seminal 1968 work A 36" X 36" REMOVAL TO THE LATHING OR SUPPORT WALL OF PLASTER OR WALLBOARD FROM A WALL, in which he removed a wall’s plaster to the dimensions stated, exposing the bare structure underneath. The gesture exemplified a certain “presence of absence” that became a recurring motif of Weiner’s as he continued to explore linguistic and symbolic paradoxes.
Drapeau for a community, from Gran Pavese – The Flag Project
1988 Monumental screenprint in colors, on polyester flag. 75 1/2 x 116 1/2 in. (191.8 x 295.9 cm) Signed and numbered 6/10 in black ink on the accompanying Certificate of Authenticity issued by the publisher (there were also 4 in Roman numerals), published by Gran Pavese Foundation, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.