“In an exhibit in 1972, there were ten paintings being exhibited called “Decade: Auto-portraits,” [1] and in a sense this series is an extension of my American Dream, and my American Dreams are, after all, my American dreams and how I relate to that whole business. The auto-portraits stem from that, mainly from a form aspect. How the canvas is devised is very close. The auto-portrait, the decade, is the ten years of the 1960s; probably for me, as for any person, a certain decade is the most meaningful one in one’s life. I don’t think any other decade will mean the same thing to me as the sixties did.”
— Robert Indiana
[1] The exhibition Robert Indiana: New Paintings and Sculpture, took place as the Galerie Denise René, New York, from November 22–December 30, 1972. The 24-inch and 48-inch Decade: Autoportraits were exhibited.
Excerpt from Barbarelee Diamonstein. “Robert Indiana.” In Inside New York’s Art World, pp. 151–66. New York: Rizzoli, 1979.
