The “Autoportrait” paintings are ambitions and not at all easy. They are a clear indication that Indiana has made just about the only fresh contribution to typographic layout since the Futurists (and what Dadaists, Constructivists, and Bauhaus designers adapted from the Futurists).
To my knowledge, this is the first time that Indiana has used overlapping forms to complicate his design. The largest forms and the controlling forms in each painting are a numeral one, a circle (zero), and a star, superimposed and “stamped” with IND, the abbreviation for Indiana. Colors are varied from painting to painting and autobiographical words relating to each year of the decade complete and complicate the compositions. The lettering, as is Indiana’s custom, is in stencil from, a device that enriches the surfaces by adding a visual texture to the flat paint. The romance of ships and shipping is evoked along with the references to highway signs and pinball machines. Because of the overlapping of forms there is a Cubist feeling to these works, but it is the American Cubism of Stuart Davis and Charles Demuth, an energetic source.
We are surrounded by words. Sometimes it is almost as if the whole world is covered by a skin of print. Although there is usually a rumble of words in our heads, fortunately most words remain in the realm of silence, otherwise we would be driven deaf by the roar of words that urge us to do what we have no interest in doing, see what we do not want to see, and above all, buy what we do not need. We adapt by refusing to see or to acknowledge what we see, giving words a subliminal edge, forgetting in the process how words actually look. This is when and where an artist like Robert Indiana comes in handy. The “Autoportraits” bring back the charm of words and make words visible again.
—John Perreault
Excerpt from "Having a Word with the Painter," Village Voice, December 7, 1972, p. 34