Pop Art: Robert Indiana
Robert Indiana (American, 1928−2018)
Decade (a portfolio of ten prints), 1971
Screenprints, III/XXV, portfolio reserved for the artist and the publishers
Sheets: 39” H x 32” W
Dr. Jacob Joseph and Bernice Fox Weinstein Collection, Gift of Lowell Nesbitt in honor of the Weinsteins, U1981.4.4.1-10
[Image courtesy of https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/robert-indiana-american-1928-decade-15-c-bed3c0249]
In this portfolio, Robert Indiana reproduced ten of his paintings that encapsulated the ethos of the 1960s. Each piece represents a specific year of that decade.
Like Andy Warhol and other Pop artists, Indiana appropriated advertisement-like imagery in his works, but unlike his contemporaries he also incorporated social and political issues. His socio-political consciousness is evident in several of the prints: For example, Yield Brother (illustrating 1962) depicts four connected yellow peace signs in response to a worldwide antinuclear plea from British scholar Bertrand Russel. Another work, The Confederacy: Mississippi (1965), criticizes Southern institutional racism, while Love Rising/Black and White Love (For Martin Luther King) (1968) features Indiana’s iconic “LOVE” piece in homage to the recently assassinated Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement.
The Decade portfolio was donated to W&L in 1981 by the artist Lowell Nesbitt, who received the suite directly from Robert Indiana, who signed each print, “for Lowell.” It was one of 25 portfolios reserved for the artist and the publishers.
- Eliza Elliott, ’17 and Grace Schwartzstein, '19
Robert Indiana (American, 1928−2018)
The American Dream, from the Decade Portfolio, 1971
Printed by Edition Domberger, Stuttgart
Published by Multiples of New York and Los Angeles
Serigraph, Signed in pencil at bottom: III/XXV /for Lowell /R. Indiana 1971
39” H x 32” W
Dr. Jacob Joseph and Bernice Fox Weinstein Collection, Gift of Lowell Nesbitt in honor of the Weinsteins, U1981.4.4.10
Robert Indiana's painting The American Dream #1, which this screenprint reproduces, dates to the beginning of the decade of the 1960s. Likened by critic Gene Swenson to “a cosmic pin-ball machine,” Indiana carefully combined words and symbols in his painting that referenced both personal elements and popular culture. It marked a significant shift in Indiana’s work and was purchased by Alfred Barr for the Museum of Modern Art the year it was completed. In a December 1961 questionnaire for MOMA, Indiana wrote about this painting:
“My ‘model’ was Mae West (appearing at the time of execution of this painting, on television’s Late, Late Show in ‘Night after Night’ – 1932) who is the most American bloom to have flowered on this ‘scene,’ which, in my case, is obviously *A*M*E*R*I*C*A*N*, and loaded with ‘personal,’ ‘topical,’ and ‘symbolic’ significance, namely all those dear and much-travelled U.S. Routes: #40, #29, #37 (on which I have lived) and #66 of the U.S. Air Force days; those awful five bases of The American Game; the TILT of all those millions of Pin Ball Machines and Juke Boxes in all those hundreds of thousands of grubby bars and roadside cafes, alternate spiritual homes of the American; the star-studded Take All, well-established ethic in all realms – spiritual, economic, political, social, sexual and cultural. Full-stop.” (http://robertindiana.com/works/letter-form-m/)
Robert Indiana (American, 1928−2018)
The Calumet, from the Decade Portfolio, 1971
Printed by Edition Domberger, Stuttgart
Published by Multiples of New York and Los Angeles
Serigraph, Signed in pencil at bottom: III/XXV /for Lowell /R. Indiana 1971
39” H x 32” W
Dr. Jacob Joseph and Bernice Fox Weinstein Collection, Gift of Lowell Nesbitt in honor of the Weinsteins, U1981.4.4.9
The Calumet, completed in 1961, is one of a group of Indiana’s “literary paintings” in which the artist incorporates poetic verse with symbols, in this case stars and circles. Here, the artist quotes several lines from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha, placed within a mandala-like circle that encompasses the names of thirteen tribes and the word “calumet.”
A “calumet” is an ornamental clay peace pipe used by Native Americans. It is also a town in Illinois, as well as a region that was historically inhabited by numerous closely connected tribes that were part of the Algonquin language group. Indiana stated that the work was “not about geography” but was about the poem and the tragedy of the “first citizens” encounter with the white man - an irony of the American dream. The artist incorporates several levels of personal meaning as well, as he does in other paintings.
Robert Indiana (American, 1928−2018)
Yield Brother, from the Decade Portfolio, 1971
Printed by Edition Domberger, Stuttgart
Published by Multiples of New York and Los Angeles
Serigraph, Signed in pencil at bottom: III/XXV /for Lowell /R. Indiana 1971
39” H x 32” W
Dr. Jacob Joseph and Bernice Fox Weinstein Collection, Gift of Lowell Nesbitt in honor of the Weinsteins, U1981.4.4.8
Robert Indiana painted Yield Brother in 1962 and selected it in 1971 to be reproduced as a screenprint in a collection known as the Decade Portfolio that includes ten of his most significant images from the decade of the 1960s. The range of subjects documents influences and national events that shaped Indiana's art of the 60s.
A leader in the Pop Art movement, Indiana combines popular images and phrases in his work to create an image packed with symbolism. At its simplest, Yield Brother combines the shape of the ubiquitous traffic yield sign with the peace symbol originally designed by Gerald Holtom as a logo for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Upon completion of the painting, Indiana donated the original work to the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation in support of its antinuclear program.
Robert Indiana (American, 1928−2018)
The Figure 5, from the Decade Portfolio, 1971
Printed by Edition Domberger, Stuttgart
Published by Multiples of New York and Los Angeles
Serigraph, Signed in pencil at bottom: III/XXV /for Lowell /R. Indiana 1971
39” H x 32” W
Dr. Jacob Joseph and Bernice Fox Weinstein Collection, Gift of Lowell Nesbitt in honor of the Weinsteins, U1981.4.4.7
The Figure 5 was a 1963 painting conceived by Robert Indiana in homage to Charles Demuth, whose 1928 painting I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold was itself created as a kind of portrait to honor the poet William Carlos Williams and his poem “The Great Figure,” which evoked a fire engine speeding through a city street: Among the rain / and lights / I saw the figure 5 / in gold / on a Red / firetruck / moving / tense / unheeded / to gong clangs / siren howls / and wheels rumbling / through the dark city. As in other works, Indiana acknowledges the importance of earlier artists.
Indiana painted five works related to this theme, in which he appropriated the primary element in Demuth's painting – a repeating figure “5.” In this version, he also stenciled text from his own earlier word paintings, including “EAT” and “DIE,” which he stated, “relates to aspects of the American scene” (http://robertindiana.com/works/the-figure-5/).
Robert Indiana (American, 1928−2018)
Brooklyn Bridge, from the Decade Portfolio, 1971
Printed by Edition Domberger, Stuttgart
Published by Multiples of New York and Los Angeles
Serigraph, Signed in pencil at bottom: III/XXV /for Lowell /R. Indiana 1971
39” H x 32” W
Dr. Jacob Joseph and Bernice Fox Weinstein Collection, Gift of Lowell Nesbitt in honor of the Weinsteins, U1981.4.4.6
In The Brooklyn Bridge, painted in 1964, Indiana incorporated four lines from the poem To Brooklyn Bridge by Hart Crane (1899-1931), which opened his long poem The Bridge, published in 1930. Within one large painting, Indiana multiplied an image of the bridge in four circles, which each envelop a different line of the poem that was chosen by Indiana and rearranged in terms of placement: And we have seen night lifted in thine arms (36th line); How could mere toil align thy choiring strings (30th line); silver-paced as though the sun took step of thee (fourteenth line); and Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still (line twenty-four). The bridge was a part of Indiana’s environment in New York, but the painting is steeped in symbolism and artistic connections.
Robert Indiana (American, 1928-2018)
Mississippi, from the Decade Portfolio, 1971
Printed by Edition Domberger, Stuttgart
Published by Multiples of New York and Los Angeles
Serigraph, Signed in pencil at bottom: III/XXV /for Lowell /R. Indiana 1971
39” H x 32” W
Dr. Jacob Joseph and Bernice Fox Weinstein Collection, Gift of Lowell Nesbitt in honor of the Weinsteins, U1981.4.4.5
The screenprint Mississippi reproduces one of a controversial series of four paintings that Pop artist Robert Indiana created in 1965 in reaction to the civil rights struggles in the American South. Originally conceived to include all 13 states in the Confederacy, Indiana completed only those of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida.
All four political/geographical works share the same format of concentric circles forming a target around a map in which a city is starred, representing locations of attacks on nonviolent civil rights demonstrators. These included Selma, AL; Philadelphia, MS; Bogalusa, La; and the state of Florida. All four paintings share the same confrontational phrase: “Just as in the anatomy of man every nation must have its hind part.” Called “history paintings” by Indiana, all four were meant as didactic works in support of social justice.
In Mississippi, Indiana highlights Philadelphia, where three Civil Rights activists were murdered in 1964. James Chaney of Mississippi and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner of New York City, all members of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), were working with the “Freedom Summer” campaign, registering African Americans in Mississippi to vote, when they were abducted and murdered by the members of law enforcement and the Ku Klux Klan in Philadelphia, MS. National outrage to the murders lent support to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Robert Indiana (American, 1928−2018)
USA 666, from the Decade Portfolio, 1971
Printed by Edition Domberger, Stuttgart
Published by Multiples of New York and Los Angeles
Serigraph, Signed in pencil at bottom: III/XXV /for Lowell /R. Indiana 1971
39” H x 32” W
Dr. Jacob Joseph and Bernice Fox Weinstein Collection, Gift of Lowell Nesbitt in honor of the Weinsteins, U1981.4.4.4
Part of the last and incomplete series of The Sixth American Dream works, the painting USA 666 was finished in 1966 and is full of autobiographical and geographical symbols. It is a large work of visual and verbal repetitions, composed of five yellow and black square canvases that each include the letters USA and a three-letter word that was symbolic to the artist. Together, the squares are assembled into the shape of a large “X” much like a cautionary railroad crossing sign. Robert Indiana commented in detail about the painting, saying more about this work than any other he produced (see http://robertindiana.com/works/the-sixth-american-dream-usa-666/ ). He mentions that the sixes are symbolic of his father, who was born in June (the sixth month) and who worked for Phillips 66, as well as for U.S. Route 66, the quintessential westward highway made famous by Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation in the 1950s, as well as Monticello Drug Company’s 666 cold preparations, whose advertisements were ubiquitous at the time. EAT represents the roadside diners along the highway and is part of Indiana’s often repeated word sequence EAT/HUG/ERR/DIE, all words that are included in this work and which he used as metaphysical symbols as well as autobiographical references.
Robert Indiana (American, 1928−2018)
Parrot, from the Decade Portfolio, 1971
Printed by Edition Domberger, Stuttgart
Published by Multiples of New York and Los Angeles
Serigraph, Signed in pencil at bottom: III/XXV /for Lowell /R. Indiana 1971
39” H x 32” W
Dr. Jacob Joseph and Bernice Fox Weinstein Collection, Gift of Lowell Nesbitt in honor of the Weinsteins, U1981.4.4.3
The colorful painting Parrot was completed in 1967 as a kind of portrait of Indiana’s Uncle George Potts, who owned a parrot. Indiana stenciled the work “PARROT” in multiple colors and added within the circle that frames the bird the Greek word “EYPHKA,” meaning “I have found [it]” (Eureka). Susan Ryan, author of Robert Indiana: Figures of Speech suggests that the word relates to found objects and Indiana’s “classical bent.”
Robert Indiana (American, 1928−2018)
Black and White LOVE, from the Decade Portfolio, 1971
Printed by Edition Domberger, Stuttgart
Published by Multiples of New York and Los Angeles
Serigraph, Signed in pencil at bottom: III/XXV /for Lowell /R. Indiana 1971
39” H x 32” W
Dr. Jacob Joseph and Bernice Fox Weinstein Collection, Gift of Lowell Nesbitt in honor of the Weinsteins, U1981.4.4.2
LOVE is an iconic Pop art image that Robert Indiana conceived first as a 1965 commission for a Christmas card for the Museum of Modern Art, emblematic of the idealism of the decade. It was a single word appropriated from popular culture that became subject matter for art. Indiana arranged a block of serif letters so that the first two, L and a tilted O, are stacked upon the remaining letters, V and E. Indiana repeated the image many times in paintings, prints and sculpture.
In 1966, he created LOVE Rising (Black-and-White LOVE Wall) in which he quadrupled the white LOVE block, split and mirrored both vertically and horizontally, on a black background. As such, it is full of political significance related to the Civil Rights movement and, according to art historian Susan E. Ryan (Robert Indiana: Figures of Speech, 216), Indiana donated it that year to CORE (Congress of Racial Equality).
Indiana reprised Love Rising as LOVE RISING/BLACK AND WHITE LOVE (FOR MARTIN LUTHER KING) again in 1968 in response to the tragic assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. That painting, as a twelve-foot square work composed of four panels, is now in the collection of the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (Museum of modern art, Ludwig Foundation, Vienna).
Robert Indiana (American, 1928-2018)
Terre Haute #2, from the Decade Portfolio, 1971
Printed by Edition Domberger, Stuttgart
Published by Multiples of New York and Los Angeles
Serigraph, Signed in pencil at bottom: III/XXV /for Lowell /R. Indiana 1971
39” H x 32” W
Dr. Jacob Joseph and Bernice Fox Weinstein Collection, Gift of Lowell Nesbitt in honor of the Weinsteins, U1981.4.4.1
The painting Terre Haute No. 2, which this screenprint duplicates, and New Castle No. 1 are two “landscapes” that Robert Indiana (neé Clark) painted at the end of the decade in 1969 of towns in the state of Indiana. The works share an identical composition and similar geographical references to rivers and highways. They were not the first in which the artist evoked his home state; the earliest, also titled Terre Haute, was painted in 1960 using words, symbols, and a color palette of primarily brown and black, symbolizing Indiana soil, that was punctuated by stenciled red and white lettering http://robertindiana.com/works/terre-haute/ ). The artist uses many of the same elements in his later works.
According to the Indiana, New Castle No. 1 celebrates a very personal landscape – his birthplace and first geographic location of significance to him (http://robertindiana.com/works/new-castle/). In contrast, Terre Haute No. 2 has no personal connection, but represents a place that interested him because of its “fancy name” (http://robertindiana.com/works/terre-haute/ ). The compositions of both paintings include – top to bottom – two stars in the upper left and right corners, which flank a central number in red. These hover over a semi-circle containing the letters of the name of a river – in the case of this work, “Wabash” – whose dimensional shadows recede as a group to a single vanishing point. Located at the center of the work is a circle enclosing a number and representing a highway sign, in this case U.S. Highway 40 – one of those known as the “Main Street of America” that runs east-west through Terre Haute, situated on the western edge of the state. The cohesive shape bursts with a sense of speed that may relate to the arteries of transportation. The name of the city is stenciled horizontally in red letters along the bottom section of the painting, and the entire group of images hovers over a background of five rectangular blocks of the color brown that recede in value from top to bottom. According to the artist, the color evokes the soil of the farming state.