Arthur Carr: I’ve always been interested, Robert, in what seems to be the way that you’ve been influenced by your geography. I’m wondering if you would have anything to say about this.
Robert Indiana: Well, it just came to my mind, Arthur, in fact today. I’ve never really thought about it before or it had never dawned on me that, you know my most frequent motif is the circle. Practically every painting I’ve ever done has at least one circle or more and usually the circle dominates the canvas. Well, I have thought of one or two other practical background reasons for my interest or my obsession with that figure. But today I thought of the fact that in Indianapolis, which essentially is my home town, I’ve lived there more than any other place; the whole city is built around and dominated by a circle. It’s called the [Monument] Circle. The city was laid out on the same plan as Washington, D.C. and the hub of the city is a monument to the Civil War and Spanish-American War and the focal point of the whole city is the circle. The downtown district is built around it. I worked there and probably my most vivid memory of it was during the, either VE or VJ Day, or probably both of them in fact, when everyone in a very exultant mood rushed to the center of the city to celebrate . . .
Arthur C. Carr, "The Reminiscences of Robert Indiana," New York, November 1965, Arthur C. Carr papers; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library, pp. 3–4.