Bataile Conceptual Art

Black Flag for Georges Bataille is a conceptual art work that was created in 2012 by artist Skylar Fein and is now on display in the New Orleans Museum of Art. The piece is located in the right hand second floor gallery. This work is successful, in my opinion, because of the ideas the artist is bringing the viewer to question such as, the way we define human value over economical value in America. The work is a large black american flag with white stars and where there would normally be red and white stripes are black stripes with white words. The artist used an additive technique to build up the work from smaller boards or blocks glued on top of one another. Each stripe alternates between a continuous statement and blocks of advertising
The bright white background of the wall richly contrasts with the solid black mass creating a lot of visual interest. Some of the words being larger of a different color than the others guided my eye around the piece in a way that created a sense of urgency and made the words seem instantly more important. While reading about the corruption the American economy causes I coincidentally(?) overheard a pair of women's conversation about their shopping plans for black Friday, it could not have been better timing if it were performance art. The artist and my surroundings truly had me pondering the ideas presented. While this work is conceptual in the way that it uses language to communicate the artist's ideas this work is also very much pop art. Much like 1960's pop artists Fein often uses popular culture references such as magazine advertisements and American flags. The artist may have also been influenced in Mondrian's work with his use of primary colors, black and white and perfectly straight lines. Fein makes a little joke with the idea of subliminal messaging being that his message is in smaller text that you can literally read between the lines of American