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Ahab

1960–62

Images

A sculpture consisting of a painted black wooden beam with a haunched tenon on a black wooden base. Across the bottom the work's title, Ahab, is painted in black stenciled letters against a white band of paint. Above the title is a wooden peg. A small wheel has been attached to both the right and left side of the upper third of the sculpture. At the top of the sculpture are two white circles.

Ahab

1960–62

Gesso, oil, wood, and iron and wooden wheels on wood

61 × 18 1/2 × 14 in. (154.9 × 47 × 35.6 cm)

 

Photo: Bruce C. Jones; Artwork: © Morgan Art Foundation Ltd./Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

Detail from Robert Indiana's journal entry for April 12, 1961 with a sketch of the sculpture Ahab

Detail from Robert Indiana's journal entry for April 12, 1961

 

Courtesy Star of Hope Foundation, Vinalhaven, Maine

Installation view of Robert Indiana: Beyond LOVE, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, September 26, 2013–January 5, 2014. Left to right, The American Dream, I (1960–61), The Rebecca (1962), Ahab (1960–62), and The Triumph of Tira (1960–62),  

Installation view of Robert Indiana: Beyond LOVE, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, September 26, 2013–January 5, 2014. Left to right, The American Dream, I (1960–61), The Rebecca (1962), Ahab (1960–62), and The Triumph of Tira (1960–62)

 

Photo: Tom Powel Imaging

Description

Colin Sargent: So Ahab, your beautiful black and white piece (1962), was a breakthrough?

Robert Indiana: I think so. That happened back when I was at Coenties Slip in New York. I might be the first modern artist to attempt to be both a painter and a sculptor at the same time, working both mediums into one piece. I think of painting as a feminine object and a statue as a masculine object, and the complete display of Ahab, which included a painted backdrop for context [The Melville Triptych (1962)], worked in those terms. Of course, it’s a variation on the Moby Dick theme. When I did that construction, I did it because the words Coenties Slip appear on the first page of Melville’s Moby Dick.

 

Colin Sargent, "Interview," Greater Portland (Me.) (Winter 1984), pp. 14–15.