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 Hessen. 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.
For his contribution to the Gran Pavese project, the provocative, multidisciplinary artist Vito Acconci took a decidedly Minimalist, sculptural approach. Instead of opting to create a screenprinted image like the majority of the 50 participants, Acconci cut circular holes of varying sizes into his polyester flag. The result is a flag that is perhaps more negative space – or when strung from a flagpole, air – than flag itself. This unique engagement with the materiality of the flag, creating space rather than image, was likely influenced by Acconci’s turn from performance artist to architectural designer in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His flag also inspires comparison to his ‘Face’ series across outdoor architectural structures and printmaking, in which the artist utilizes negative space to create a smiling visage. Through both his Gran Pavese flag and in his Faces, Acconci utilizes this negative space to activate the environment in which the artwork is placed; in the case of the flag, its holes bring environmental imagery into the artwork itself, exposing cloud patterns, large expanses of sky, or passing birds. With this more abstract deployment of negative space, Acconci’s hole-filed flag represents a truly unconventional approach to the Gran Pavese project, one that challenges the perceived two-dimensionality of the medium.
1988 Monumental polyester flag. 72 x 111 in. (182.9 x 281.9 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.