They did not break the mold, but they stopped using staples.

"to dissimulate is to feign not to have what one has. to simulate is to feign to have what one hasn't. one implies a presence, the other an absence. but the matter is more complicated, since to simulate is not simply to feign: "someone who feigns an illness can simply go to bed and pretend he is ill. someone who simulates an illness produces in himself some of the symptoms" (littre). Thus, feigning or dissimulating leaves the reality principle intact: the difference is always clear, it is only masked; whereas simulation threatens the difference between "true" and "false", between "real" and "imaginary". since the simulator produces "true" symptoms, is he or she ill or not?" - baudrillard, simulacra and simulations

there hangs on the wall behind my desk two things; three things if you count egg shell latex paint. just above and directly behind my head is an cream-colored circle clock in a faux-marble frame with a second hand. to the clock's left and in a brushed aluminum frame is a print of jasper johns' american flag of 1954-55. jasper johns has always held things. in every painting there is something suspended, something familiar but covered in six feet of cemented pigment. a broom, a metal can, a dart board, numbers, letters, art. this image here, it holds nothing. there is no mark of his trowel gouged wax on cloth on board, there are no newspaper clippings, there is no symbolism. there is only the mark of an inkjet printer and a plexiglass cover that was scratched when it was hung on september 12, 2001. i often wonder if people count me patriotic when they get off the elevator - the busy receptionist marking time on his work day with an eye on the american prize. i do not feel patriotic. i do not feel like a symbol. i do not feel like a simulation. maybe that's because i have been endorsing checks for two hours. maybe that's because jasper wanted no musket shots fired across his "troweled ground" (ad reinhardt). or maybe it's because we close at 4 on tuesdays. whichever, i think that walter benjamin was right: in the battle of time and space and reproduction, the image is the ground and no one can stand to see it.

"i'm in the club posted up with some gangbangers, still pimpin' old school, candy cadillac on swingers."
-paul wall.

(timothy o'sullivan. a harvest of death, gettysburg, pennsylvania. july, 1863)