Robert
Indiana

Born in New Castle, Indiana in 1928 as Robert Clark, Indiana spent the large majority of his childhood moving around his namesake state. After serving three years in the United States Air Force, he attended the Art Institute of Chicago until 1953, followed by the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, and then Edinburgh College of Art from 1953-54. He then returned to the United States in 1954 to settle in New York.

The Pop artist changed his name to Indiana in 1958, acknowledging his roots in the American Midwest. This was reflected in his work’s shift away from the figurative painting, typical of his art school years, to the more commercial imagery that his paintings adopted in the 1960s.

Indiana’s major artistic success was in the early 1960s, following the purchase of American Dream 1 (1960-61) by Alfred Barr Jr for the New York MoMA. This painting depicts four circles, stacked two on top of two, each of which containing a star and a combination of text and numbers. The vivid colours and repeated geometric imagery did much to establish Indiana’s signature commercial ‘Pop’ style and indeed this four-circle template has been returned to by the artist many times throughout his career, creating multiple variations of American Dream.

He was also featured in a number of influential New York shows during this period which solidified his reputation as a key emerging creative artist. Shows including New Media-New Forms at the Martha Jackson gallery in 1961 and the International Exhibition Of The New Realists at Sidney Janis gallery in 1962.

Indiana’s most famous creation is his LOVE project, with few Pop images being more widely recognised. This distinct iconography, with the letters ‘L’ and a slightly tilted ‘O’ stacked on top of the ‘V’ and ‘E’ originally appeared in a series of poems written in 1958.

This image has since reappeared across his oeuvre, in works such as 4-STAR LOVE (1961) and in the MOMA commissioned Christmas card of 1965, which first contributed to its wide distribution. It was also made into a large-scale polychrome aluminium sculpture, which reiterated Indiana’s interest in the use of the written word as a viable artistic element. Speaking on this phenomenon, Indiana stated 'oddly enough, I wasn’t thinking at all about anticipating the love generation and hippies. It was a spiritual concept. It isn’t a sculpture of love any longer, it’s become the very image of love itself.'

In this spirit, the LOVE template has also been reappropriated multiple times across the last fifty years, notably in the 1980s with General Idea’s AIDS awareness subway poster campaign, and by Indiana himself in 2008 with HOPE - a work whose reproduction proceeds were donated to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

The American experience has been a consistent source of inspiration for Indiana’s work, expressed typically through pop imagery, language and everyday objects. He took elements of the familiar and ordinary, often using found objects from his surroundings in his work. He stated himself 'There are more signs than trees in America…so I think of myself as a painter of American landscape.' Indiana’s work often also references American literature, with works such as the Melville Triptych (1961) and The Calumet (1961) directly lifting text from their inspiration.

Following his departure from New York in his later life, Indiana chose to draw inspiration from more local experiences. In particular, works such as Ash, (1985) look at found objects from his new surroundings in Maine. Indiana also drew inspiration from paintings of Marsden Hartley from the 1930s, which led to his own 18-part series of paintings known as the Hartley Elegies (1989-94).

It is difficult to categorise Indiana’s oeuvre into one specific style as he drew influences from such a wide range of sources throughout his life. While considered a leader of the Pop Movement, his work visually distinguishes itself through Indiana’s overt engagement with social and political issues as well as through incorporation of literary and historical references important to the artist.

Nevertheless, Ellsworth Kelly’s teaching is clear in Indiana’s use of hard edge painting, as Kelly insisted early on that Indiana abandon the figurative style of painting he had pursued while studying in Chicago. From this point on Indiana consistently employed bright, recognisable forms, often lifted from oil company or commercial logos, relating to - yet neither criticising nor celebrating - American corporate power.