Whereas the other people who are sometimes exhibited with—and this includes myself—who are exhibited with the Pop people—Rauschenberg, Dine, Jasper Johns, and people like this, they all are something else. They too have Pop inclinations or Pop overtones but essentially they are something else, as essentially I am a hard-edge formalist. . . . In the Washington, D.C. formalist show [Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Formalists, June 6–July 7, 1963] I fit in; I don't say I fit in perfectly, because I was one of the few painters who did use words and, for instance, there was the Beware! Danger! American Dream Number Four. I used the imagery of the danger stripes that are on the backs of trucks and on the street signs and so forth. Well, this has a Pop aspect to it, which is not just formalism, but—and I think perhaps my painting was a little, perhaps just a little out of character with that show. . .
— Robert Indiana
Richard Brown Baker, Oral history interview with Robert Indiana, 1963 Sept. 12–Nov. 7, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, p. 151.