Artwork of the 80's
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Artists & Works
Robert Indiana
American (b. 1928)
UNTITLED from Homage to Picasso (1974)
serigraph
29.375"x 22"

STYLE: HOMAGE TO PICASSO
POP ART

  

Born Robert Clark, Robert Indiana studied art at a number of institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Skowhegan institute in Maine, and London University. Settling in New York in the sixties, he began exhibiting at the same time as other artists of the Pop movement. Indiana painted one of the most famous icons of the Pop movement, Love, one of a series of works he did comprised entirely of letters and numbers. He has said he was inspired by a "God is Love" sign he saw on a neighborhood church. Much of his other contributions to contemporary art have been overshadowed by the notoriety of this work. Nonetheless, Indiana's work has been shown in one-person exhibitions worldwide and is in almost every important collection of modern and contemporary art. Indiana has lived as a recluse in Vinalhaven, Maine since 1978.

Indiana was deeply committed to depicting America and the American Dream. Many of his works have addressed national and cultural identity, even American politics. He was involved in making books, posters, and prints from the beginning of his career, and many of these works have their roots in the imagery of stencils and signage. His print from the Homage to Picasso portfolio belongs to that genre; it uses the forms of road signs and stenciled lettering to include a wide variety of references to Picasso and Picasso's biography.

CRITICAL EXCERPTS

Ken Johnson, New York Times, 5/21/04
"Robert Indiana is best known for his 'Love' logo, which eventually became a postage stamp. He has been painting Pop-style, signlike compositions that address more or less urgent topics since the early 1960's. Some have been existentially general, like diamond-shaped pictures bearing the words 'Eat'' or ''Die.'' Some have been politically specific, like his painting 'A Divorced Man Has Never Been the President.'
Mr. Indiana's new paintings address a theme that has been much on people's minds since Sept. 11, 2001: peace, or rather the absence of peace. Each diamond-shaped canvas features a circle, like a life-saver, bearing block-lettered sentences about the loss of peace: 'Peace falls in terror,' 'Peace dives in oblivion,' 'Peace plunges in despair.' Within each circle is the familiar forked peace sign. The paintings also look like traffic signs."
David Colman, New York Times, 2/6/03
"For his part, Mr. Indiana seems oblivious to his profile on the island. [Vinalhaven] 'I'm happiest now working in the sail loft, because it reminds me of Coenties Slip,' [his first studio in lower Manhattan] he said. 'It carries me back to the golden days.'
In 1964, the year he moved from Coenties Slip to the Bowery, Mr. Indiana designed the 'Love' graphic for a Christmas card for the Museum of Modern Art. The logo took off, and in May 1966 he had a whole show of variations on the theme at the Stable Gallery in Manhattan.
The graphic became central to the 1960's visual vocabulary, appearing on clothes, jewelry, towels and rugs. The 1973 postage stamp with the logo was one of the best-selling stamps ever, though Mr. Indiana said he received only $1,000 for the design. (He had failed to copyright the logo, and so did not profit as it appeared on countless coffee cups and T-shirts.) The logo did not endear Mr. Indiana to the art establishment, and his star faded in inverse proportion to the success of 'Love.'
He nurtures grudges dating back decades. His list of enemies includes Henry Geldzahler, the Metropolitan Museum curator who died in 1994, and Andy Warhol, whose art he found less than fascinating.
Warhol and Mr. Indiana had shows at the Stable Gallery in 1962, but after that, Mr. Indiana said, their careers slowly diverged. ''I found Warhol's lifestyle embarrassing,'' he said. 'All the Factory stuff and the so-called movie stars and Studio 54. Very few people ever came to Coenties Slip -- and we know what happened at the Factory.'
'It was a disappointment that I didn't get the same kind of coverage that someone like Warhol did,' he added, 'but I've survived.'"