What Robert Indiana piece is this?
April 28, 2018 6:01 PM Subscribe
The Wikipedia entry for Robert Indiana (the LOVE pop art guy) has an inset pic showing him at work on a sculpture which features designs inspired by WW1 aviation livery. What piece is it? Are there color photos online? Are there more works by Indiana featuring these design schema? I think there are, but it has been many years since I scrobulated his oeuvre.
Response by poster: Nice link! I had forgotten about the fire-company pieces from around 1960.
posted by mwhybark at 6:30 PM on April 28, 2018
posted by mwhybark at 6:30 PM on April 28, 2018
Response by poster: The pieces in the link roughly covered by the title Hartley Elegy do in some cases use a highly similar set of elements, as seen in KvF II (Hartley Elegy). I guess that narrows the time the piece in the pic I asked about was being made, and not incidentally, why it's new to me - the time period is early nineties and I completed my academic undergraduate degree in art history (well, the art part) in 1990.
posted by mwhybark at 6:40 PM on April 28, 2018
posted by mwhybark at 6:40 PM on April 28, 2018
Response by poster: After reading beagle's link to a backgrounder on the Hartley Elegies, I was strongly struck by how much Indiana has discarded the intimate uniform elements Hartley was using (shoulder bosses, braid, uniform cap button roundels) and replaced them with aviation-livery-derived motifs. Wikipedia notes that Indiana served in the pre-Air Force American aviation military, the USAAF, which I mistakenly tagged here as USAAC and AAC. I'll just add USAAF because the older tags are legit too.
posted by mwhybark at 6:49 PM on April 28, 2018
posted by mwhybark at 6:49 PM on April 28, 2018
This thread is closed to new comments.
For background on the Hartley pieces, see this.
posted by beagle at 6:18 PM on April 28, 2018