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Decade: Autoportrait 1961

1977

Images

Decade: Autoportrait 1961, a 72-inch-square painting with a brown ground. A circle containing a blue decagon dominates the canvas. In the center of the circle is a large black and red numeral one. Painted on top of the one is a black and red star, and on top of the star is a white and yellow numeral one. Text, arrows and numbers are painted in the spaces between the arms of the stars. On the right side the word Chicago is painted in white letters, with a black arrow to the left of the letters H and I, and a green number 61 painted to the left of the letters, A, G, and O. Below the O a yellow number 72 has been painted. The words USA and Indiana are painted in multicolored letters at the bottom of the circle. The words "Bar" and "South Ferry" are painted in white letters in the left side of the circle, as well as a yellow arrow.

Decade: Autoportrait 1961

1977

Oil on canvas

72 × 72 in. (182.9 × 182.9 cm)

McNay Art Museum, San Antonio. Gift of Robert L. B. Tobin

 

Photo: Courtesy of the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas; Artwork: © Morgan Art Foundation Ltd./Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

Installation view of Robert Indiana: A Sculpture Retrospective at the Albright-Knox Gallery of Art, Buffalo, New York, 2018. Left to right, Decade: Autoportrait 1961 (1977), Two (1960–62, cast 1991), THREE (1978–2003), and Five (1984),  

Installation view of Robert Indiana: A Sculpture Retrospective at the Albright-Knox Gallery of Art, Buffalo, New York, 2018. Left to right, Decade: Autoportrait 1961 (1977), Two (1960–62, cast 1991), THREE (1978–2003), and Five (1984)

 

Photo: Tom Powel Imaging

Description

This painting celebrates the year 1961. I had my studio in South Ferry, which is synonymous with Coenties Slip. Now the Chicago, I think that in these paintings what I was also doing was slipping decades. In other words ten years before, in 1951, I was in Chicago, and I like the word Chicago and I spent four years there and so loosely speaking this gave me an excuse to use the word Chicago.

But the more significant relationship to ’61 is the word Bar, and of course the word Bar, the second R is slipping under the 1, and it was in 1961 that Alfred Barr [director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York] encountered my first American Dream and that was probably the, one of the most important events in my life.

The colors, I think I feel that these are celebratory for me. I was just celebrating the, as I said, one of the most important years and events of my life.

— Robert Indiana

 

Excerpt from Susan Elizabeth Ryan, interview with Robert Indiana, May 5, 1992, Robert Indiana: Figures of Speech Archive, 1987–2005.