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Decade: Autoportrait 1963

1976

Images

Decade: Autoportrait 1963, a 72-inch square painting with an orange ground. A circle containing a black decagon dominates the canvas. In the center of the circle is a large blue and orange numeral one. Painted on top of the one is a blue and orange star, and on top of the star is a blue, orange, and black numeral three. Text, arrows and numbers are painted in the spaces between the arms of the stars. On the right side Paris is painted in blue letters, with an orange arrow painted underneath the letters A and R. The number 63, the six painted blue and the three orange, and a blue number 72, appear in the lower right side of the circle. Indiana appears painted blue at the bottom of the circle, with three stars above it. The words "Die" and "The Slips" are painted in orange letters in the left side of the circle, as well as a blue arrow.

Decade: Autoportrait 1963

1976

Oil on canvas

72 × 72 in. (182.9 × 182.9 cm)

 

Photo: Steven Sloman; Artwork: © Morgan Art Foundation Ltd./Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

Decade: Autoportrait 1963 (1976) on display at The Peninsula Beverly Hills

Decade: Autoportrait 1963 (1976) on display at The Peninsula Beverly Hills

Description

Robert Indiana:  . . . in 1953, I was in Paris. So I am again slipping two decades back instead of one. And of course in ’63 I was still on Coenties Slip. I had another two years to go and DIE there probably does refer to Kennedy’s death.

Susan Elizabeth Ryan: And no one else’s that you can think of?

Indiana: Well I had a dreadful time in Paris, let’s put it that way . . . But, no, I think that’s just a reference to Kennedy.

Ryan: Was color significant?

Indiana: I think that, you see what’s happening, with the exception of the “1,” what’s happening with my colors is I am fairly consistent with all of my colors. It relates to the ten stages of man’s life. And these colors reflect what colors were used in my first portfolio, which was the Numbers . . . It was my first show in Europe, you see. So I have kept the colors of my Numbers fairly consistent.

 

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