ART REVIEW : A Flap Over What ‘Old Glory’ Represents : Exhibition of New Flag Designs Poses Uneasy Questions of Politics, Art

Since January, the 104th Congress has introduced a grand total of 148 amendments to the U.S. Constitution--a document apparently so flawed in conception and in dire need of fixing that it’s a miracle we’ve managed to survive as a nation these last two centuries.

Among the high-profile amendments is a proposal, recently passed by the House, that would ban physical desecration of the American flag. The amendment, already proposed (and defeated) several times before, is like those inflatable clowns that get knocked down only to bob back up, grinning dumbly in your face.

Posturing patriots love it. Support can be offered with emotional fanfare and virtuous testimonials to Mom and apple pie. Against the rooting of the mob, reason doesn’t stand much chance.

Try arguing that, as a governing principle, the Constitution is an unprecedented work of genius because it enlarges the scope of human freedoms, not because it enumerates those to be taken away.

Try invoking history: Whenever individual freedoms are constitutionally narrowed, American society gets into trouble. (Remember Prohibition?)

Ideas like those can barely be heard above the braying of the congressional mob. Neither can a question like this: If such an amendment were added to the Constitution, would Jock Reynolds and Suzanne Helmuth need to be arrested?

The artists, at the invitation of a fund-raising exhibition organized by Capp Street Project in San Francisco, altered an official photographic portrait of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). A small, folded American flag was slid through a slit in Helms’ mouth. Circles were cut around his two eyes, turned on the diagonal and reversed from right to left, yielding the wild look of a googly-eyed lunatic.

The folded flag therefore reads as part mouth-foaming, mad-dog blather, which issues from a politician identified in the title as a “Disturbed Patriot With Flag,” and part mouth-stuffing gag, which turns the tables on a notorious advocate of government censorship.

As satire, Reynolds’ and Helmuth’s wicked caricature is inspired. First you laugh out loud, then you start to consider the implications.

Since an actual flag has been used, however, does this work of art amount to physical desecration?

Desecration means not treating as sacred something generally regarded as holy. Reynolds and Helmuth clearly mean to attack a powerful politician as both silly and dangerous, but I’d say they’re using the flag with highest regard for the hard-won freedoms it symbolizes.

Not many works in the rest of the show, which has traveled to the Santa Monica Museum of Art and is titled “Old Glory, New Story: Flagging the 21st Century,” are as inventive as this. Cuteness is more the order of the day.

More than 100 artists were asked to create a new design for an American flag, to reflect the changed social and political landscape of the United States. This is not a very inspired idea for a show. Flags, after all, are meant to represent continuity, not transience and the perpetual need for alteration.

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Vito Acconci’s contribution, which is virtually identical to our current model of stars-and-stripes except that his is made from clear plastic vinyl rather than red-white-and-blue cloth, makes that point with deftness and insightful wit. Acconci’s transparent flag is an all-inclusive banner, which allows whatever might be glimpsed behind it to stand as a symbol for America.

It is also nearly invisible--there, but not there--which is how symbols operate most effectively.

Acconci is among the few artists who had a go at actually redesigning the flag. Most (like Reynolds and Helmuth) instead offer commentaries about the flag, or about related issues of patriotism and national identity.

A lot are creaky, one-dimensional cliches, such as Judith Shea’s leather wallet filled with American-flag money; or Ray Beldner’s “For Calvin Coolidge,” sewn with stripes made from white dress-shirts and red power-ties; or Sigmar Willnauer’s stripes of dollar bills alternated with Super Lotto tickets.

One is a provocative call to arms. “Alterations,” an appealing installation by Suzanne Lacy, Britta Kathmeyer and Susanne Cockrell, is composed from three neck-high piles of clothing--one red, one white, one blue--arranged around a chugging Singer sewing-machine and three chairs. Obliquely conjuring the legend of Betsy Ross, the modern pile of homely alterations suggests that if the flag and what it stands for is going to be remade, it should build upon its origin as women’s work, enlightened from a modern vantage point.

More typical is the legion of undoubtedly sincere but truly awful stuff, such as a black-and-white photocopy of a flag, with a box of crayons attached.

There’s wide-eyed political naivete, too. Bill and Karin Moggridge have made a checkerboard flag, based on a statistical breakdown of colors currently employed on the flags of 174 nations. A sign attached hopes that “internationalism will take over from nationalism in the next millennia.”

The checkered flag, woven for a fund-raiser, is a perfect symbol for seamless globalization of the marketplace. The preponderance of works like this suggests that having artists design a new American flag is about as productive as having legislators turn out helpful amendments to the Constitution.

* Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2437 Main St., (310) 399-0433, through July 30. Closed Monday and Tuesday.