Column Eat
1963–64
Gesso on wood with base by Richard Artschwager
64 × 13 1/4 × 13 1/4 in. (162.6 × 33.7 × 33.7 cm)
Photo: Hugo Glendinning; Artwork: © Morgan Art Foundation Ltd./Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Installation view of Robert Indiana: Sculpture 1958-2018, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, March 12, 2022–January 8, 2023
Photo: © Jonty Wilde, courtesy of Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Artwork: © 2022 Morgan Art Foundation Ltd./ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/DACS, London
I think everybody reads into “eat die”—the most common reading. That is that we are a consumer society and everybody knows that we’re going to consume ourselves to death with our carbon monoxide and food poisoning and everything else and all those good things.
— Robert Indiana
Excerpt from Robert Indiana Interviewed by Marco Livingstone, London, September 1991.