Bowdoin College Museum of Art | - Double Portrait (Gay Flag)

Preview image of work. oil on canvas, Double Portrait (Gay Flag) 27453

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Double Portrait (Gay Flag)

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Artist

Ross Bleckner (New York City, NY, 5/12/1949 - )

Title

Double Portrait (Gay Flag)

Creation Date

1993

Century

late 20th century

Dimensions

108 1/8 x 72 1/4 in. (274.64 x 183.52 cm)

Classification

Paintings

Creation Place

North America, United States

Medium and Support

oil on canvas

Credit Line

Jewish Museum, New York, Francis A. Jennings bequest in memory of his wife, Gertrude Feder Jennings, 2000-15, Photo Credit: The Jewish Museum, New York / Art Resource, New York, Courtesy Mary Boone Gallery, New York, © Ross Bleckner, Photo by Richard Goodbody, Inc.

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

This bold 1993 painting overlays multiple forms of “doubleness”. It simultaneously identifies the artist as homosexual and Jewish by combining a large rainbow flag—an emblem of gay pride—and an embossed representation of the Star of David. Saturated with autobiographical content, "Double Portrait" also nods to the history of modernist painting, which had largely eschewed personal content, as in the Color Field painting of the 1960s and the Pop renderings of American flags by Jasper Johns and Claes Oldenburg. Acknowledging his own response to a crisis of historic proportions, Bleckner reflects: “I think the awareness of AIDS . . . politicized me . . . AIDS, and fear, made me make the images a little more representational, and at the same time more personal and more political . . . So I guess it was oddly liberating. You identify yourself more as a gay man, or whoever you are, and it helps you to realize who you are as an artist.”