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Decade: Autoportrait 1964

1976

Images

Decade: Autoportrait 1964, a 72 inch square painting with a black ground. A circle containing a red decagon dominates the canvas. In the center of the circle is a large yellow, red, and orange numeral one. Painted on top of the one is a yellow and orange star, and on top of the star is a yellow and black numeral four. Text, arrows and numbers are painted in the spaces between the arms of the stars. On the right side London is painted in black and orange letters, with a black arrow painted underneath the first letters O and N. Below the last N is a yellow arrow, and below that the number 72, painted in orange. Indiana appears painted red at the bottom of the circle, a black and orange number 64 above. The word "Eat" is painted in black, and "Coenties in yellow and black letters," with an orange arrow underneath the letters E, N, and T, in the left side of the circle.

Decade: Autoportrait 1964

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

Indiana's EAT (1964) at the New York World's Fair, which opened on April 22, 1964

Indiana's EAT (1964) at the New York World's Fair, which opened on April 22, 1964

Description

Robert Indiana: . . . in ’54 I was in London so that again is slipping two decades back and in ’64 . . . now here Coenties appears, the Slip is not there, but I still was on Coenties Slip. And in ’64 was the appearance of my EAT sign at the New York World’s Fair.

Susan Elizabeth Ryan: And red and yellow and black are?

Indiana: Refer to the colors in the original Four and for me the 4 is a dangerous number . . . I’m not sure that I can sit here and recall exactly why I arrived at that, but first of all the 4 gave me the greatest difficulty as far as composing it within the circle. That’s rather superficial. But numerically 4 to me is a difficult number because it’s sandwiched in between two very beautiful and special numbers . . . 3 and 5. And I just can’t scrape up anything very good for the 4, you see.

Ryan: It doesn’t have any sort of narrative significance? It’s all formal?

Indiana: No, it does. It’s charged with again, memories. Remember I lived in those 21 different houses before I was 17 . . . When two people, which is, most houses have two people who live next to a house with another two people, very frequently there’s a great deal of trouble.

 

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