“Coenties, of the dozen or so slips of Manhattan, is the oldest, largest and busiest of the lot . . . Here this heady confluence of all elements, the rock, the river, the sky and the fire of ship and commerce causes a natural magnetism that has drawn a dozen artists since to the Slip . . . Not only this, but every ship that passed on the river, every tug, every barge, every railroad car on every flatboat, every truck that passes below — on Slip, on South, on Front, on Water and on Pearl Streets — and every helicopter that now lands at the heliport a stone’s throw from my building — for progress pushes its way onto the obsolete waterfront, as sure to go as the artists collected by its rotting piers — carries those marks and legends that have set the style of my painting. The commercial brass stencils found in the deserted lofts — of numbers, of sail names, of the names of 19th century companies (The American Gas Works) became matrix and substance for my paintings and drawings. So then did all things weave together.”
— Robert Indiana
First published in Richard Stankiewicz; Robert Indiana (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1963)
