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Lot 582 Property from an Important American Collection
Robert Indiana (B. 1928)
U-2
Closed18 May 2017
Price Realised
USD 391,500
More Information
Specialist note
This work will be included in the forthcoming Robert Indiana catalogue raisonné of paintings and sculpture being prepared by Simon Salama-Caro.
Alluding to the tenuous post-war political landscape, Robert Indiana’s U-2 commemorates May 1, 1960, the day which an American U-2 spy plane, hovering in Russian airspace, was shot down by Soviet forces. An embarrassment to the Eisenhower administration, the U-2 debacle marked a further deterioration in American- Soviet relations. Indiana’s assemblage U-2, along with many of his 1960s Herm constructions, demonstrates the artist’s political agenda, serving as an artistic appraisal of American foreign policy.
Bearing a white US Air Force emblem and the numeric signs “U”, “2” and “60,” Indiana’s salient mixed media assemblage is adorned with an iron carriage wheel. A weathered wooden beam sourced from a demolished building in Coenties Slip, the area in New York which the artist resided alongside Agnes Martin, Ellsworth Kelly and Jack Youngerman, constitutes the sculpture’s mass. Indiana embraced the damage and discolorations in his found material, considering the found wooden pieces sculptures in themselves.
Championing the tradition of assemblage brought to the artistic forefront by Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, Indiana pioneered a new form of unapologetic art. His 1960s Herms are the first works of art in which he amends signs, numbers, and letters onto found objects. In U-2, Indiana realizes the potential of found forms and fixed signs, levying a material critique that is at once critical and patriotic.
Alluding to the tenuous post-war political landscape, Robert Indiana’s U-2 commemorates May 1, 1960, the day which an American U-2 spy plane, hovering in Russian airspace, was shot down by Soviet forces. An embarrassment to the Eisenhower administration, the U-2 debacle marked a further deterioration in American- Soviet relations. Indiana’s assemblage U-2, along with many of his 1960s Herm constructions, demonstrates the artist’s political agenda, serving as an artistic appraisal of American foreign policy.
Bearing a white US Air Force emblem and the numeric signs “U”, “2” and “60,” Indiana’s salient mixed media assemblage is adorned with an iron carriage wheel. A weathered wooden beam sourced from a demolished building in Coenties Slip, the area in New York which the artist resided alongside Agnes Martin, Ellsworth Kelly and Jack Youngerman, constitutes the sculpture’s mass. Indiana embraced the damage and discolorations in his found material, considering the found wooden pieces sculptures in themselves.
Championing the tradition of assemblage brought to the artistic forefront by Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, Indiana pioneered a new form of unapologetic art. His 1960s Herms are the first works of art in which he amends signs, numbers, and letters onto found objects. In U-2, Indiana realizes the potential of found forms and fixed signs, levying a material critique that is at once critical and patriotic.