July 4

Gay Artist Jasper Johns: Three Flags (1958)

Note in response to my more alert star-counting blog followers: 
In 1958 (date of art work below) there were still only 48 states!

Jasper Johns, a native of South Carolina, moved to New York City in 1953 after a stint in the Army, in search of a career in the arts. Within ten years he was considered the greatest living American artist. He soon fell in love with an older fellow artist, Robert Rauschenberg, who became his mentor and inspiration. They had met while working together creating window displays for Tiffany’s. Lovers from 1955 to 1961, they lived and worked together during that time, but Johns and Rauschenberg parted after just six years because of their uneasiness with being recognized as a couple publicly. Their breakup was so acrimonious that they both left New York City and didn't speak to one another for more than a decade. Johns became increasingly reclusive and eventually moved to an estate in Sharon, Connecticut, where he lives to this day. He has another home on the island of Saint Martin. Rauschenberg died in 2008.    


On February 15, 2011, Jasper Johns received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, becoming the first painter or sculptor to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom since Alexander Calder in 1977.

America the Beautiful: words by lesbian poet Bates

The words to the patriotic hymn America the Beautiful were written by lesbian poet Katherine Lee Bates (1859-1928), an English teacher at Wellesley College, while she was visiting the top of Pikes Peak in 1893. Miss Bates spent the summer of 1893 teaching English at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She wrote, "One day some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to 14,000-foot Pikes Peak. We hired a prairie wagon. Near the top we had to leave the wagon and go the rest of the way on mules. I was very tired. But when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse."

The words to her one famous poem first appeared in print in The Congregationalist, a weekly journal, for Independence Day, 1895. The poem reached a wider audience when her revised version was printed in the Boston Evening Transcript, November 19, 1904. Samuel Ward wrote the familiar tune (1882) known as Materna, to which Miss Bates’ words were joined.  Sadly, Ward never got to hear his music paired to the words by Bates. Ward wrote the melody for Materna on his way home from a trip to Coney Island, the amusement park at a beach in Brooklyn, New York. The tune just popped into his head as he stood riding on the boat back to Newark. The words and melody were first joined in November of 1904, but Ward had died on September 28, 1903.

Bates was in a committed 25-year  relationship with Katherine Coman, chair of the Economics Department and Dean of Wellesley College. Bates referred to Coman as her “Joy of Life” and wrote many poems about their love.

Coman was diagnosed with cancer and died in 1915. Only a few years before her own death, Bates wrote to a friend, "So much of me died with Katharine Coman that I'm sometimes not quite sure whether I'm alive or not."

America the Beautiful sung by Ray Charles:

Vulgar attempt at patriotism. Man up, soldier!