Hart’s new work is a deeply symbolic piece which taps into the underlying substructure of our cultural state; it exemplifies chaos, harmony, and our path to transcendence via complementary layers that build up the work to its final form which is utterly electric and eye opening. Her ability to tell a cultural story through her art is what makes her brilliance self evident.

If we remove the stripes and look at the work's underlying structure we find classic Hart; a symphony of motion, color, chaos and harmony. The first gross layer of this piece is simply chaos. However, like all abstract expressionists, there is actually an order to the chaos.  Order that can’t be articulated, it’s there creating peace and harmony within the work. The same is true culturally, we can choose to only see the chaos unfolding around us, or we can know that there is a divine harmony amongst the chaos.  The second being the stripes which represent a structure; a symbolic transcendence that our country can achieve, they are the metaphoric phoenix rising from the ashes.

Transcendence is only possible by acceptance of the layers that came before it. We need not strive to remove the chaos, instead we harmonize, creating peace and new structure on top of it.  We transcend and include what came before. This is the path of evolution.

First, the willingness to see the first two layers as symbolic steps we must each individually take and to have faith that there is already order in the chaos. Then and only then will we have the correct mindset to impose a new structure on the whole, just as Hart has so boldly done. 

The stripes show us the only group that truly matters; we are Americans, we are family, we are human beings. No other group matters. Race, gender, and political affiliations are pseudo groups that vanish as soon as a true primordial structure is brought to the light. 

In fact, any grouping only keeps us further apart. The crisp, clean, translucent stripes are a sign that we can surpass the chaos if we remember who we really are. They tell us not to push away from the past, but to embrace it. They show us to embrace each other as brothers and sisters.  

I believe that if Hart’s American overture tells us one thing it is, that we will rise and transcend together as Americans.

Written by Jason Allen