flâneur

Selected Writings - Artist - Robert Indiana

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Only that I am American. Only that I am of my generation, too young for regional realism, surrealism, magic realism, and abstract expressionism and too old to return to the figure. Only that for the last five years I have lived and worked on the Slip and the water front, where signs are much more profuse than trees (farewell, Nature), and much more colorful than the people of the city (farewell, Humanity), and the scene much too busy for calm plastic relationships (farewell, Pure Intellect). Not wishing at all to unsettle the shades of Homer, Eakins, Bellows, Sheeler, Hopper, Marin, et al, I propose to be an American painter, not an internationalist speaking some glib visual Esperanto; possibly I intend to be a Yankee. (Cuba, or no Cuba.) I am an American painter of signs charting the course. I would be a people’s painter as well as a painter’s painter. I feel that I am at the front of a wave not over-dense with fish. I paint the American scene (A non-provincialism, for, in truth, this

Artist - Robert Indiana Skip to content Artist Statement Museum of Modern Art, New York December 1961 Only that I am American. Only that I am of my generation, too young for regional realism, surrealism, magic realism, and abstract expressionism and too old to return to the figure. Only that for the last five years I have lived and worked on the Slip and the water front, where signs are much more profuse than trees (farewell, Nature), and much more colorful than the people of the city (farewell, Humanity), and the scene much too busy for calm plastic relationships (farewell, Pure Intellect). N

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