Robert Indiana

Robert Indiana was born Robert Clark in New Castle, Indiana on September 13, 1928. Adopted as an infant, he spent his childhood moving frequently throughout his namesake state. His artistic talent was evident at an early age, and its recognition by a first grade teacher encouraged his decision to become an artist. In 1942, Indiana moved to Indianapolis in order to attend Arsenal Technical High School, known for its strong arts curriculum. After graduating he spent three years in the U.S. Air Force and then
studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting in Maine, and the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland.
In 1956, two years after moving to New York, Indiana met Ellsworth Kelly, and upon his
recommendation took up residence in Coenties Slip, once a major port on the southeast tip of
Manhattan. There he joined a community of artists that would come to include Kelly, Agnes Martin,
James Rosenquist, and Jack Youngerman. The environment of the Slip had a profound impact on
Indiana's work, and his early paintings include a series of hard-edge double ginkgo leaves inspired by the
trees which grew in nearby Jeannette Park. He also incorporated the ginkgo form into his nineteen-foot
mural Stavrosis (1958), a crucifixion pieced together from forty-four sheets of paper that he found in his
loft. It was upon completion of this work that Indiana adopted the name of his native state as his own.
Indiana, like some of his fellow artists, scavenged the area's abandoned warehouses for materials,
creating sculptural assemblages from old wooden beams, rusted metal wheels, and other remnants of
the shipping trade that had thrived in Coenties Slip. While he created hanging works such as Jeanne
d'Arc (1960–62) and Wall of China (1960–61), the majority were freestanding constructions which
Indiana called "herms" after the sculptures that served as boundary markers at crossroads in ancient
Greece and Rome. The discovery of nineteenth-century brass stencils led to the incorporation of brightly
colored numbers and short emotionally charged words into these sculptures as well as canvases, and
became the basis of his new painterly vocabulary.
Indiana quickly gained repute as one of the most creative artists of his generation, and was featured in
influential New York shows such as New Media—New Forms at the Martha Jackson Gallery (1960), Art of
Assemblage at the Museum of Modern Art (1961), and the International Exhibition of the New
Realists at the Sidney Janis Gallery (1962). In 1961, the Museum of Modern Art acquired The American
Dream, I (1960–61), the first in a series of paintings exploring the illusory American Dream, establishing
Indiana as one of the most significant members of the new generation of Pop artists who were eclipsing
the prominent painters of the New York School.
Although acknowledged as a leader of Pop, Indiana distinguished himself from his Pop peers by
addressing important social and political issues and incorporating profound historical and literary
references into his works. American literary references appear in paintings such as The Calumet (1961)
and Melville (1961), exhibited in 1962 in Indiana's first New York solo exhibition, held at Eleanor Ward's
Stable Gallery. In 1964 Indiana accepted Philip Johnson's invitation to design a new work for the New
York State Pavilion at the New York World's Fair, creating a twenty–foot EAT sign composed of flashing
lights, and collaborated with Andy Warhol on the film Eat, a silent portrait of Indiana eating a mushroom
in his Coenties Slip studio. His first European solo exhibition took place in 1966 at Galerie Schmela in
Düsseldorf, Germany, and featured his Number paintings (1964–65), a series of works on a theme that
he has explored in various formats throughout his career.
1966 marked a turning point in Indiana's career with the success of his LOVE image, which had been
featured in a solo exhibiDon at the Stable Gallery. The word love, a theme central to Indiana's work, first
appeared in the painDng 4-Star Love (1961). Love was a subject of great spiritual significance for the
arDst, illustrated by the painDng Love Is God (1964), which was inspired by an inscripDon in the ChrisDan
Science churches he aLended in his youth. IniDally experimenDng with a composiDon of stacked leLers
in a series of 1964 rubbings, Indiana subsequently turned this invenDve design, a formal departure from
his previous works, into different hard-edged color variaDons on canvas. Indiana's LOVE, selected by the
Museum of Modern Art in 1965 for its Christmas card, quickly permeated wider popular culture, and was
adopted as an emblem of the "Love GeneraDon." Appearing on a best-selling United States Postal Service
stamp (1973) and reproduced on countless unauthorized products, the proliferaDon of the image led, on
one hand, to negaDve criDcism and incorrect assumpDons of the arDst as a sell-out. However, the
image's popularity more importantly emphasizes its great resonance with large and diverse audiences,
and has become an icon of modern art. The universality of the subject, to which Indiana conDnued to
return, is further evidenced by his translaDon of LOVE into AHAVA (Hebrew) and AMOR (Spanish).
In 1978, Indiana chose to remove himself from the New York art world. He seLled on the remote island
of Vinalhaven in Maine, moving into the Star of Hope, a Victorian building that had previously served as
an Odd Fellows Lodge. Aler a period spent semng up his home and new studio, Indiana turned to
themes that related to his local experience, working on a suite of eighteen large-scale painDngs known
as The Hartley Elegies (1989–94), inspired by the German Officer painDngs of Marsden Hartley, who lived
on Vinalhaven in the summer of 1938. He also used found objects to create sculptures such as Ash
(1985) and Mars (1990), works that reflected his new surroundings while also making reference to his
past, and returned to and expanded upon his seminal American Dream series, compleDng The Ninth
American Dream in 2001.
In addition to being a painter and sculptor, Indiana has created a significant number of prints, among
them the Numbers Portfolio (1968), a collaboration with the poet Robert Creeley, as well as many other
works of graphic art, including the poster for the opening of the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center
(1964), and the poster for the opening exhibition of the Hirshhorn Museum of Art (1974). He designed
the stage sets and costumes for the Virgil Thompson and Gertrude Stein opera The Mother of Us All,
which was presented in 1967 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and expanded in 1976 for the
Santa Fe Opera in honor of the Bicentennial. Indiana has also created other unique projects, such as the
design for a basketball court at the Milwaukee Exposition Convention Center Arena in 1977.
Indiana's artwork has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world, and his
works are in the permanent collections of important museums such as the Museum of Modern Art and
the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the National Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum
and Sculpture Garden, and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C.; the Albright-
Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Menil Collection in
Houston; the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire; the Museum Ludwig in Cologne,
Germany; the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands; MUMOK (Museum Moderner Kunst
Stiftung Ludwig Wien) in Vienna, Austria; the Art Museum of Ontario in Toronto; and the Israel Museum
in Jerusalem. He has also been included in numerous international publications, and is the subject of a
number of monographs.
In 2013 the Whitney Museum of American Art hosted the artist's first New York retrospective, Robert
Indiana: Beyond LOVE, curated by Barbara Haskell. Indiana passed away in his home on May 19, 2018,
just a few weeks before the opening of his sculpture retrospective at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.