Robert Indiana (1928- )

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1 Robert Indiana (1928- ) Robert Indiana (born Robert Clark) was born in New Castle, Indiana on September 13, He changed his last name to Indiana as a tribute to his home state. Words and numbers were important to Indiana. "I've always been fascinated by numbers. Before I was seventeen years old, I had lived in twenty-one different houses. In my mind, each of those houses had a number." His artwork was inspired by the signs and images he saw as a child while driving his father to work. Indiana remembers the neon signs and game machines from the roadside restaurants where his mother worked, and he puts their shapes into his artwork. He also likes to use the colors of his father's gasoline-company truck red and green with the blue and white of the sky and clouds-colors found in his best known work LOVE. When I was a kid, my mother used to drive my father to work in Indianapolis, and I would see, practically every day of my young life, a huge Phillips 66 sign, he once wrote. In 1953, Indiana received a degree from the Art Institute of Chicago and in 1954, won a scholarship to the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland. In 1956, Indiana moved to New York City, where he began to experiment in geometric pop art styles. He began to paint in a geometric, hardedge style, blending commercial art and existentialism. In the early 1960s he did his first constructions of junk wood and weathered iron. These works, at first severely geometric, combine metal and wood with gesso. In the early 1960s several of his works were purchased by major museums and collectors and his pieces were included in many exhibitions, including his first one-man show in 1962 at the Stable Gallery, New York. In 1964 he collaborated with Andy Warhol on the film EAT and in the same year received his first public commission, a work for the exterior of the New York State Pavilion at the New York World's Fair -- a 20-foot EAT Sign. Although he was associated with the Pop Art movement, Indiana s work differed from that of other famous Pop artists. Whereas the general pop movement took interest in the mass media and trappings of consumer culture, Indiana was drawn to Americana and national and cultural identity. He also incorporated personal meaning in his work, unlike that of his contemporaries. "Some people like to paint trees. I like to paint love. I find it more meaningful than painting trees." With his first New York solo exhibition at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery in 1962, Indiana began a long career of showcasing his works in over 30 museums and galleries, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum of Modern Art, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C., and the Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam, The Netherlands. In 1964, he created a Christmas card for the Museum of Modern Art featuring the word LOVE in a symmetrical square, tilting the letter O. The artwork was so popular that, in 1973, the U.S. Postal Service created an 8 cent stamp from the image. This sparked a fury of products, items, plagerisms, With a printing of 300 million, it became the most reproduced image in pop art. But while his famous LOVE sculpture was recreated in paintings, postcards, T-shirts and in postage stamps that earned more than $25 million for the U.S. Postal Service the work barely made Indiana any money. Instead, it earned him a reputation as a sell-out. LOVE was full of deep personal meaning, but Indiana s intentions were lost on both fans and critics. -Megan Wilde In 1978, he decided to move from New York City to Vinalhaven, a small coastal island off of Maine, to work in peace, away from the critics, commercialism and plagiarism of his work. In 2008, Indiana created an image similar to his iconic LOVE, but this time showcasing the word "HOPE," and donated all proceeds from the sale of reproductions of his image to Democrat Barack Obama's presidential campaign, raising in excess of $1,000,000. A stainless steel sculpture of HOPE was unveiled outside Denver's Pepsi Center during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. The Obama campaign sold T- shirts, pins, bumper stickers, posters, pins and other items adorned with HOPE. Editions of the sculpture have been released and sold internationally and the artist himself has called HOPE "Love's close relative". Indiana is still living and working in Vinalhaven, Maine.

2 Masterpiece: Love sculpture Artist: Robert Indiana Project: 3 Dimensional Name Mobile Objectives: Vocabulary: Materials: To create hanging mobile with 3D lettering Experiment with shading techniques to create 3 dimensional design 3 dimensional, shading, parallel & curved lines, shadow, light source 6x6 white heavy paper cardstock letter templates rulers pencils erasers color pencils/crayons black markers or sharpies paper clips ***VOLUNTEER SHOULD PRACTICE MAKING A 3D LETTER BEFORE CLASS*** Process: 1. Give each student one 6x6 paper for each letter of the student s name. (students may want to use a nick name, if their first name is long) 2. Pass out letter templates. Have students choose the letters of their name-but only one template for duplicate letters. (ie: stev for steve) (students can share if there isn t enough of a particular letter) 3. Demonstrate making a 3D letter on the board or at the front of the class. 4. Have students place a letter template in the middle of their square paper. 5. Lightly outline the letter template in PENCIL. 6. Next. trace the pencil outline with a black marker. 7. Place the template inside the marker outline so it matches up. Then move the template up and to the right slightly of the marker outline, so it is offset from the marker outline. 8. Have students trace the template again with pencil, being careful not to move the template. 9. Remove the template and have students connect the letter corners by making a straight line with a ruler. 10. Next, erase all pencils line that are inside the marker outline of the letter. Be careful NOT to erase the pencil lines outside the marker outline. 11. Have students trace the remaining pencil lines with marker. 12. Once the 3D letter takes shape, the students can shade the letter. 13. Have students pick two different color pencils or crayons that are contrasting shades. (ie: light and dark blue, pink and red, yellow and orange etc.) 14. The face or front of the letter should be colored with the lighter shade of the two colors. The back and sides of the letter should be colored with the darker shade. Have students press harder with the darker shade. This will emphasize the 3D effect. 15. Repeat steps with each letter of student s name. 16. *If time permits, students can trace the back of their letters on the other side and color. 17. When students have completed all the letters of their name, assemble from top to bottom with paperclips. Hang outside classroom with string.

3 Possible Questions: Look at Robert Indiana s LOVE sculpture poster: 1. What subject does this sculpture represent? 2. What kind of belief does it embody? 3. How does it express this? 4. Why do you think the artist chose this subject matter? 5. Does this sculpture have a strong presentation? 6. How does it look from different sides, angles and lighting? 7. What kinds of materials do you think the artist used? 8. How does this sculpture relate to its environment? Does it blend in? Does it evoke a reaction?

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5 Artist: Robert Indiana Masterpiece: LOVE Sculpture PROJECT SAMPLE: