Robert Indiana’s Hartley Elegies (1989–94) is a series of 18 paintings inspired by Marsden Hartley’s War Motif series, which Hartley executed as a tribute to the young German soldier Karl von Freyburg, who died during World War I and with whom Hartley had a deep friendship. Indiana employed Hartley’s stylized visual language throughout the Elegies, while reinvesting them with additional content and meaning, including personal references.
KvF IX, like KvF III, incorporates President Kennedy’s well-known 1963 proclamation “Ich bin ein Berliner,” made in front of the Berlin Wall, alongside the designation “Der Amerikanische Maler.” The latter references Hartley’s status as an American painter in Berlin, but can also be applied to Indiana himself, the self-proclaimed “American painter of signs.” By including the reference to Kennedy Indiana established the painting as a tribute to two men, Hartley and Kennedy (whose election he celebrated in his painting Electi).
While KvF III takes the colors of the German flag, red, yellow, and black, for its color scheme, KvF IX is a red, blue, green, and black painting. Red, blue, and green recall Indiana’s renown LOVE (1966), thus the choice of colors allowed the artist to further insert himself into the work and to further link himself to Hartley and von Freyburg. The design inside the ring is similar to that of KvF III, however Indiana replaced the letter E (likely standing for Queen Elisabeth of Greece, the patroness of the third regiment of the grand-grenadiers, in which Hartley’s close friend and von Freyburg’s cousin Arnold Rönnebeck served) and numeral 4 (von Freyburg’s regiment) with von Freyburg’s initials, KvF. The nine of the rectangular painting has also been replaced by a six, and below the ring are two sixes. 66 serves as both a reference to Hartley’s age at death, and the year of Indiana’s famous “Love” show at the Stable gallery. The number six is also one which Indiana closely associated with his father, who was born in June, the sixth month, worked for the Phillips 66 oil company and disappeared behind the Route 66 sign when he abandoned his family.
