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Lot Essay
This work will be included in the forthcoming Robert Indiana catalogue raisonné of paintings and sculpture being prepared by Simon Salama-Caro.
“I suppose that, due to the exposure and the enormous amount of press that he received, somehow or another whenever I think about life as an artist [my thought] usually bounces upon Picasso and how he lived his life. It doesn't seem that very many American artists' aspiration or dream is to make their studio the kind of situation that the European seems naturally to have done. I suppose that is part of the difference of being an American or being a European. I like to feel, myself, no particular European influence, but I can certainly relate to that European direction of establishing a very special place where all the special things are found”- Robert Indiana quoted in Robert Indiana, exh. cat., University of Texas at Austin, University Art Museum, Austin, 1977, p. 31.
With its bold imagery and vibrant color palette, this striking painting is Robert Indiana’s celebration of the life and work of the great Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. Across the large expanse of canvas, Indiana incorporates key elements of Picasso’s life; the artist’s initials PP are displayed back to back in the center of the painting, his father’s name (and the artist’s own middle name) Ruiz is writ large across the center, and the years of the artist’s birth and death (1881 and 1973) are all displayed within the central circular motif. Using the aesthetic vocabulary which he had been perfecting since the 1960s, Indiana reinforces his reputation as one of the most distinctive member of the Pop Art movement, “Robert Indiana set himself apart from his Pop colleagues by the unique manner in which he fused idea, work, and image in his art into complete ‘verbal-visual’ forms, as he called them” (B. Haskell, et al., Robert Indiana: Beyond Love, exh. cat. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2013, p. 183).
Indiana’s decision to include Picasso’s father’s surname brings a highly personal dimension to the present work, and is a consummate example of Indiana’s exploration of personal themes concerning identity within the context of larger subject matter. The bold colors, stencil lettering, and graphic symbols of Hommage à Picasso are signature elements of Indiana’s work; the circular design, for example, is a shape that Indiana has valued from early in his art practice, both for its classic geometry and for its metaphysical symbolism, expressive of eternity. Such was the importance of this work to the artist, that it was subsequently included in his American Dream Portfolio set of screenprints. “Drawing on the vocabulary of vernacular highway signs and roadside entertainments, Indiana fashioned an art that was dazzlingly bold and visually kinetic” (B. Haskell, et al., Robert Indiana: Beyond Love, exh. cat. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2013, p. 11).
Best known for his LOVE sculpture, Indiana’s paintings and sculptures have broken through the traditional confines of high art and become enduring and universally recognized global cultural icons. Indiana emerged out of the Pop Art era of the early 1960s to develop his own highly distinctive style, which is characterized by bold and graphic colors, influenced by midcentury American design motifs such as road signs and advertisements, and displays a fascination with words and their power to address central issues of human existence.
Robert Indiana has been one of the preeminent figures in postwar America art since the early 1960s. His art practice has advanced the genres of Assemblage, Hard-Edge Painting, and Pop Art, fields where Indiana has produced highly original and distinctive work. His themes encompass issues of American identity, his own personal history, and the power of abstraction and language as expressed through bold symbols and designs. His use of the written word and of literary reference points in the context of the visual arts of painting, sculpture, and printmaking has helped to establish the incorporation of text as a central element of visual art, and has arguably had an impact on numerous younger contemporary artists, figures as diverse as Glen Ligon, Christopher Wool, Mel Bochner, Jenny Holzer, and Bruce Nauman, among others, who make text a defining feature of their own work.
Indiana’s body of work is both distinctly American in its expression, and international in perspective. “…His art is Pop in that it is the deeply ingrained idea of American making and fabrication…and the bringing together of high and low. Yet what’s so distinctive about his work is that it’s deeply historical, going back almost to a kind of Puritan tradition, while at the same time, it’s ultimately international” ((B. Haskell, et al., Robert Indiana: Beyond Love, exh. cat. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2013, p. 195).
“I suppose that, due to the exposure and the enormous amount of press that he received, somehow or another whenever I think about life as an artist [my thought] usually bounces upon Picasso and how he lived his life. It doesn't seem that very many American artists' aspiration or dream is to make their studio the kind of situation that the European seems naturally to have done. I suppose that is part of the difference of being an American or being a European. I like to feel, myself, no particular European influence, but I can certainly relate to that European direction of establishing a very special place where all the special things are found”- Robert Indiana quoted in Robert Indiana, exh. cat., University of Texas at Austin, University Art Museum, Austin, 1977, p. 31.
With its bold imagery and vibrant color palette, this striking painting is Robert Indiana’s celebration of the life and work of the great Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. Across the large expanse of canvas, Indiana incorporates key elements of Picasso’s life; the artist’s initials PP are displayed back to back in the center of the painting, his father’s name (and the artist’s own middle name) Ruiz is writ large across the center, and the years of the artist’s birth and death (1881 and 1973) are all displayed within the central circular motif. Using the aesthetic vocabulary which he had been perfecting since the 1960s, Indiana reinforces his reputation as one of the most distinctive member of the Pop Art movement, “Robert Indiana set himself apart from his Pop colleagues by the unique manner in which he fused idea, work, and image in his art into complete ‘verbal-visual’ forms, as he called them” (B. Haskell, et al., Robert Indiana: Beyond Love, exh. cat. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2013, p. 183).
Indiana’s decision to include Picasso’s father’s surname brings a highly personal dimension to the present work, and is a consummate example of Indiana’s exploration of personal themes concerning identity within the context of larger subject matter. The bold colors, stencil lettering, and graphic symbols of Hommage à Picasso are signature elements of Indiana’s work; the circular design, for example, is a shape that Indiana has valued from early in his art practice, both for its classic geometry and for its metaphysical symbolism, expressive of eternity. Such was the importance of this work to the artist, that it was subsequently included in his American Dream Portfolio set of screenprints. “Drawing on the vocabulary of vernacular highway signs and roadside entertainments, Indiana fashioned an art that was dazzlingly bold and visually kinetic” (B. Haskell, et al., Robert Indiana: Beyond Love, exh. cat. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2013, p. 11).
Best known for his LOVE sculpture, Indiana’s paintings and sculptures have broken through the traditional confines of high art and become enduring and universally recognized global cultural icons. Indiana emerged out of the Pop Art era of the early 1960s to develop his own highly distinctive style, which is characterized by bold and graphic colors, influenced by midcentury American design motifs such as road signs and advertisements, and displays a fascination with words and their power to address central issues of human existence.
Robert Indiana has been one of the preeminent figures in postwar America art since the early 1960s. His art practice has advanced the genres of Assemblage, Hard-Edge Painting, and Pop Art, fields where Indiana has produced highly original and distinctive work. His themes encompass issues of American identity, his own personal history, and the power of abstraction and language as expressed through bold symbols and designs. His use of the written word and of literary reference points in the context of the visual arts of painting, sculpture, and printmaking has helped to establish the incorporation of text as a central element of visual art, and has arguably had an impact on numerous younger contemporary artists, figures as diverse as Glen Ligon, Christopher Wool, Mel Bochner, Jenny Holzer, and Bruce Nauman, among others, who make text a defining feature of their own work.
Indiana’s body of work is both distinctly American in its expression, and international in perspective. “…His art is Pop in that it is the deeply ingrained idea of American making and fabrication…and the bringing together of high and low. Yet what’s so distinctive about his work is that it’s deeply historical, going back almost to a kind of Puritan tradition, while at the same time, it’s ultimately international” ((B. Haskell, et al., Robert Indiana: Beyond Love, exh. cat. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2013, p. 195).