American flag, from the portfolio America: Now + Here

One year after the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, artist Eric Fischl found himself embroiled in controversy when his sculpture Tumbling Woman was exhibited in the lower concourse of Rockefeller Center.At around the same time, in an attempt to interrogate the role of the arts in moments of crisis, Fischl invited some 150 artists, poets, playwrights, musicians, and filmmakers to respond to the idea of “America” in the post–9/11 era. He subsequently transformed six trailers into mobile exhibition spaces and traveled across the country with the idea of engaging local artists and communities in dialogue around these issues.The portfolio on view here was produced in conjunction with the project: works chosen include, among others, a subdued black- and-white portrait of former Vice President Al Gore by Chuck Close and a blue-eyed child beauty pageant contestant by Andres Serrano; collaged photographic compositions drawing together fragmentary imagery alluding to race and patriotism by Lyle Ashton Harris and Ralph Gibson; and landscapes and cityscapes by April Gornik and Lou Reed. Fischl conceived of the project as spanning three thematic categories: America as icon; America as place; and America as people. Here and now, just as then, the project asks us to reconsider the role of artists and the arts in the United States of today. (“All for One and One for All: Portfolios from the Permanent Collection,” co-curated by Andrea Inselmann and Sonja Gandert and presented at the Johnson Museum June 24-August 20, 2017)