Introduction: The flag in contemporary art

Throughout this year-(plus)-long presidential campaign season, the American flag has been an issue in a way last seen in 1992, when flag burning was a major topic.

For Republicans the flag been a litmus test for patriotism and all-American-ness, a test that's so reductive that right-wingers might as well be rallying to the banner of their favorite NFL team. Worse, the GOP seems to believe that a focus on lapel pins has served a useful political purpose: To remind the country that their opponent in the presidential race is a guy named 'Barack Obama' who has a Kenyan father and who attended elementary school in Indonesia. For months Obama refused to pander to the lapel-pin mafia and refused to wear a flag pin, which helped the Obama-is-a-Muslim narrative (created by right-wing hitman Andy Martin) gain traction.

Democrats have used the flag too, but in more subtle ways. For example, the Obama campaign has used iconography from the flag in its campaign logo. Obama visually draped himself in the flag at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, but instead of bludgeoning viewers with super-size stars-and-stripes, his image-makers chose to present flags as they might be behind the President at White House speeches or press conferences. Most often the Democrats don't try to out-flag the GOP, they simply point out the Republicans' hypocrisy. "Everyone knows Republicans love America," Jon Stewart said on the Aug. 27 Daily Show. "They just hate half the people living in it."

When I've thought of the flag in the last week or two, I've remembered a photograph taken by the Rocky Mountain News' Todd Heisler (above) and a series of photographs that The Memory Hole forced the Pentagon to release under the Freedom of Information Act (right). In each of these pictures jingoism is replaced with respect. These photographs and the way the flag is present in them don't roust the dopamine of the rabid right. Instead they command our attention, our awe and our gratitude in a way a thousand lapel pins never will.

Artists have used the American flag in art for decades. I've asked many contemporary art curators to pick a favorite or particularly relevant work of art and to write a few words about it. Each day this week I'll feature their selections. At the end of the week I'll add a couple of my own. (Bloggers: Post your faves and email 'em to me at LinksforMAN-blog (a t)yahoo(d o t) com.)