His, The American Reaping Company, refers not to this peculiarly American political harvesting, but is an homage to Cyrus McCormick in whose crumbling Chicago Gold Coast mansion he architected a spectacular art students ball in 1952 called "Death of a Mansion" which turned out to be so successful that hundreds of ticket holders, who were denied entrance by the police, battered their way through a side entrance with a ram.
— Robert Indiana
Except from the artist’s autochronology, first published in John W. McCoubrey and Robert Indiana, Robert Indiana (Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art and Falcon Press, 1968).