“In an exhibit in 1972, there were ten paintings being exhibited called “Decade: Auto-portraits,” 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
Excerpt from Barbarelee Diamonstein, “Interview with Robert Indiana,” in Inside New York’s Art World (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1979)