The 1968 Exhibit: Ramparts, May 1968: American flag cover

Dugald Stermer, renowned was the art director for Ramparts, the left-wing firebrand magazine of the 1960s and 1970s, has died.  You can read his obituary here.   You can also read a 2009 interview with Stermer and with Peter Richardson, author of A Bomb in Every Issue:  How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America.  

One of Stermer's finest covers for Ramparts was for the May 1968 double issue--a re-creation of an American flag as imagined by none other than Mark Twain in 1901.  For this cover, an actual cloth flag was stitched together, with red-and-black stripes and skull-and-crossbones "stars."