Alfredo Jaar A Logo for America 1987–95
© Alfredo Jaar. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co., New York
A Logo for America consists of five photographs that document Alfredo Jaar’s 1987 intervention of an electronic billboard in New York’s Times Square. With a 42-second animation that appeared intermittently amid scheduled advertisements over the course of two weeks, Jaar employed methods and the language of advertising to address a geopolitical issue. Images of the flag and map of the United States were followed by declarations that contest some of the strong associations commonly made with the word “America.” His statements, such as “THIS IS NOT AMERICA’S FLAG,” overlapped the flag image, challenging the ethnocentrism of this country, which habitually claims the identity of the entire American continent as its own. Jaar’s project seeks to remind North Americans that South America is also “America.”
Identification
Title
A Logo for America
Production Date
1987–95
Object Number
1996.6a-e
Credit Line
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of Luis Calzadilla
Copyright
© Alfredo Jaar. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co., New York
https://www.pamm.org/en/artwork/1996.6a-e
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Physical Qualities
Medium
Silver dye bleach prints, face-mounted to acrylic
Dimensions
Five sheets: 23 7/8 x 23 7/8 inches each
Visual Description
A Logo for America by Alfredo Jaar is a series of photographic prints made between 1987 and 1995. They are made of silver dye bleach prints that are face mounted to acrylic. The five sheets each measure roughly twenty-four inches by twenty-four inches.
The prints are hung in a line parallel to the ground. They depict images of a public art installation displayed as moving light-up text and images on billboards in Times Square, a famous intersection and tourist attraction in New York City.
The prints feature a dark background of buildings in New York City. Each depicts a different variation of the titled artworkLogo for America. The “logos” are displayed on billboards made of smaller lights. The first depicts the map of the United States in gold-yellow lights. To the right, the second one depicts the outline of the map and inside of it there is text that reads “THIS IS NOT AMERICA”. The following image shows the flag of the United States in its colors: red, blue, but the white is replaced by the gold-yellow of the small bulbs of the billboard. The next image also depicts the flag of the United States except it does not feature the colors of the flag. Instead, it is black and gold-yellow. On top of the flag there is text that reads “THIS IS NOT AMERICA’S FLAG”. The final image shows text that reads “AME_ICA” where the letter R would be, there is instead a map of North and South America.
The images rest in a white and square frame with a white background. The images occupy only the top half portion of the frame and the rest is left white.
