- 133
ROBERT INDIANA | One Through Zero (The Ten Numbers)
估價
1,500,000 - 2,000,000 USD
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招標截止
描述
- Robert Indiana
- One Through Zero (The Ten Numbers)
- each stamped with the artist's signature, date 1978-2003 and number AP 1/2
- polychrome aluminum on painted aluminum base, in 10 parts
- each, including base: 33 1/4 by 33 1/4 by 17 in. 84.5 by 84.5 by 43.2 cm.
- Conceived in 1978 and executed in 2003, this work is artist's proof number 1 from an edition of 3 plus 2 artist's proofs.
來源
Morgan Art Foundation Ltd. (acquired directly from the artist)
Acquired from the above from the present owner
Acquired from the above from the present owner
展覽
New York, Paul Kasmin Gallery, Robert Indiana: Hard Edge, September - November 2008, cat. no. 4, pp. 33 and 35, illustrated in color (another example exhibited)
Seoul, Gallery Hyundai, Robert Indiana: More than Love, December 2013 - January 2014, illustrated in color (another example exhibited)
New York, Paul Kasmin Gallery, Robert Indiana, January - March 2018 (another
example exhibited)
Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Robert Indiana: A Sculpture Retrospective, June - September 2018, fig. 39, p. 40, illustrated, pl. 42, p. 182, illustrated in color (another example exhibited)
Seoul, Gallery Hyundai, Robert Indiana: More than Love, December 2013 - January 2014, illustrated in color (another example exhibited)
New York, Paul Kasmin Gallery, Robert Indiana, January - March 2018 (another
example exhibited)
Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Robert Indiana: A Sculpture Retrospective, June - September 2018, fig. 39, p. 40, illustrated, pl. 42, p. 182, illustrated in color (another example exhibited)
出版
Robert Ayers, "Robert Indiana," Artnews, Vol. 107, November 2008, p. 162, illustrated in color
David Ebony, "The Perennial Optimist," Art in America, Vol. 96, November 2008, pp. 78 and 80, illustrated in color
Alexandra Peers, "Bridging the Gulf in the Art World," Art in America, Vol. 98, February 2010, p. 27, illustrated in color
Norman Foster and Jean-Marc Provost, Moving: Norman Foster on Art, Nîmes 2013, pp. 372-373, illustrated in color
Maggie Duffy, "A Show of Depth and Meaning," Tampa Bay Times, 18 November 2018, pp. E4-5, illustrated in color
David Ebony, "The Perennial Optimist," Art in America, Vol. 96, November 2008, pp. 78 and 80, illustrated in color
Alexandra Peers, "Bridging the Gulf in the Art World," Art in America, Vol. 98, February 2010, p. 27, illustrated in color
Norman Foster and Jean-Marc Provost, Moving: Norman Foster on Art, Nîmes 2013, pp. 372-373, illustrated in color
Maggie Duffy, "A Show of Depth and Meaning," Tampa Bay Times, 18 November 2018, pp. E4-5, illustrated in color
Condition
These works are in very good and sound condition overall. The surfaces are clean and smooth. Under very close inspection and extreme raking light, there are a few extremely faint and pinpoint superficial irregularities visible, inherent to the artist's chosen medium and fabrication process. The colors are bright, fresh and clean.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.
拍品資料及來源
“People don’t stop to think about how beautiful numbers really are, perhaps for the same reason people don’t stop to think about how beautiful words are...it is the role of the artist—my particular role, if you will—to make words and numbers very, very special.”
Robert Indiana For Robert Indiana, beloved American painter of signs and symbols, numbers had a deeply personal significance. Beside their self-referential numeric definitions, each Arabic numeral represented a moment or memory in Indiana’s life, and the artist took great interest in a system whose symbols never changed but could be endlessly rearranged to create new meanings. One Through Zero (The Ten Numbers) is immediately recognizable as pure Indiana: simultaneously biographical and universal, the monumental sculptural forms are carefully fabricated in his characteristic typography and bright colors.
Numbers began appearing as a standalone motif in Indiana’s oeuvre in the 1960s, but never on such a large scale as the One Through Zero (The Ten Numbers) series. He was fascinated by their easy legibility and their ability to shapeshift between a semi-mystical significance and pure form without ever changing shape. “My work is almost entirely autobiographical. Everything I’ve done has something to do with my life” (the artist in Barbaralee Diamonstein, Inside New York’s Art World, New York 1979, p. 153). Numbers defined the artist's childhood. Growing up in Indiana, the state from which he adapted his “nom de brush,”during the Great Depression, he had lived in 21 houses by the age of 17. A red and green Philips 66 gas station sign loomed over the route his father took to work each day; inspiring him to later assign those colors to the sculptural Six. He called the ten-story, neon sign “the one most fascinating visual object in [his] entire youth;” the sign, combined with commercial stencils he found in his studio in New York, would lead to the creation of the hard-edged, colorful visual language that made him so famous (the artist in “Oral History Interview with Robert Indiana,” Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, September 12 – November 7 1963, n.p.).
Robert Indiana’s polychromed numbers sculptures are, beyond their plump, sinuous forms and vibrant color combinations, a monument to the life-cycle of mankind. With his cycle of numbers from One Through Zero, a theme Indiana first essayed in a series of paintings in 1964-65, the artist conceived the cardinal numbers as marking the stages of life from birth (One) to death (Zero). Indiana deployed numbers frequently in his sculptures and paintings prior to that time, but with this painting series of the mid-sixties, he assigned specific color combinations to each number. These same combinations would subsequently be used in the polychromed numbers sculptures that Indiana conceived in 1978 and executed decades later, such as this set completed in 2003.
In Indiana’s imagination, each color combination has significance. For example, Four, representing adolescence, is assigned the “most raucous and unruly color combination” of red and yellow. The red and green of Six are the colors of the Phillips 66 sign of Indiana’s childhood; Indiana’s father, who was born in June (the sixth month), worked for the company and habitually travelled Route 66. Eight features the rich colors of fall season; the black and yellow caution stripes of Nine signify ‘caution, death is near’; and the ashen grisaille of Zero represents death. One needn’t understand the rich web of biographical and symbolic associations of the sculptural series or its numbered parts to appreciate Indiana’s playfully straightforward but meticulously crafted aesthetic, but, as with much of Indiana’s art, there is much more than initially meets the eye in this deceptively simple Pop masterpiece.
The curving surface of each number shifts and changes as one moves around the sculpture, giving the numerals expressive loops and waves that give life to the heavy aluminum. The two-color combinations pop when viewed from the side, emphasizing “the graphic essence of his forms while giving his sculptures vibrant three-dimensional life” (Ibid.). The aesthetic success of the Number series can be seen in the “Indiana style” typography popular today in contemporary design and advertising and used in the fields of fashion, technology, finance and beyond.
Indiana valued double-association in his work, frequently exploring verbal-visual themes such as the number 66, which he liked both for its visual pattern and its connection to his childhood. A self-proclaimed painter of signs, he followed Pop Art’s embrace of fabrication and commercialization while rejecting the academicism of Abstract Expressionism. Along with the signs of his youth, Indiana combined the geometric, colorful flatness of Ellsworth Kelly’s works with the themes of Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns to create his own unique style. One Through Zero (The Ten Numbers) monumentalizes one of the most important motifs of Indiana’s oeuvre. Their playful color and appealingly commercial typography are intriguingly complicated by their potential for recreation; by arranging and rearranging their order, one may place oneself in dialogue with Indiana and form new meanings from symbols hundreds of years old.
Robert Indiana For Robert Indiana, beloved American painter of signs and symbols, numbers had a deeply personal significance. Beside their self-referential numeric definitions, each Arabic numeral represented a moment or memory in Indiana’s life, and the artist took great interest in a system whose symbols never changed but could be endlessly rearranged to create new meanings. One Through Zero (The Ten Numbers) is immediately recognizable as pure Indiana: simultaneously biographical and universal, the monumental sculptural forms are carefully fabricated in his characteristic typography and bright colors.
Numbers began appearing as a standalone motif in Indiana’s oeuvre in the 1960s, but never on such a large scale as the One Through Zero (The Ten Numbers) series. He was fascinated by their easy legibility and their ability to shapeshift between a semi-mystical significance and pure form without ever changing shape. “My work is almost entirely autobiographical. Everything I’ve done has something to do with my life” (the artist in Barbaralee Diamonstein, Inside New York’s Art World, New York 1979, p. 153). Numbers defined the artist's childhood. Growing up in Indiana, the state from which he adapted his “nom de brush,”during the Great Depression, he had lived in 21 houses by the age of 17. A red and green Philips 66 gas station sign loomed over the route his father took to work each day; inspiring him to later assign those colors to the sculptural Six. He called the ten-story, neon sign “the one most fascinating visual object in [his] entire youth;” the sign, combined with commercial stencils he found in his studio in New York, would lead to the creation of the hard-edged, colorful visual language that made him so famous (the artist in “Oral History Interview with Robert Indiana,” Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, September 12 – November 7 1963, n.p.).
Robert Indiana’s polychromed numbers sculptures are, beyond their plump, sinuous forms and vibrant color combinations, a monument to the life-cycle of mankind. With his cycle of numbers from One Through Zero, a theme Indiana first essayed in a series of paintings in 1964-65, the artist conceived the cardinal numbers as marking the stages of life from birth (One) to death (Zero). Indiana deployed numbers frequently in his sculptures and paintings prior to that time, but with this painting series of the mid-sixties, he assigned specific color combinations to each number. These same combinations would subsequently be used in the polychromed numbers sculptures that Indiana conceived in 1978 and executed decades later, such as this set completed in 2003.
In Indiana’s imagination, each color combination has significance. For example, Four, representing adolescence, is assigned the “most raucous and unruly color combination” of red and yellow. The red and green of Six are the colors of the Phillips 66 sign of Indiana’s childhood; Indiana’s father, who was born in June (the sixth month), worked for the company and habitually travelled Route 66. Eight features the rich colors of fall season; the black and yellow caution stripes of Nine signify ‘caution, death is near’; and the ashen grisaille of Zero represents death. One needn’t understand the rich web of biographical and symbolic associations of the sculptural series or its numbered parts to appreciate Indiana’s playfully straightforward but meticulously crafted aesthetic, but, as with much of Indiana’s art, there is much more than initially meets the eye in this deceptively simple Pop masterpiece.
The curving surface of each number shifts and changes as one moves around the sculpture, giving the numerals expressive loops and waves that give life to the heavy aluminum. The two-color combinations pop when viewed from the side, emphasizing “the graphic essence of his forms while giving his sculptures vibrant three-dimensional life” (Ibid.). The aesthetic success of the Number series can be seen in the “Indiana style” typography popular today in contemporary design and advertising and used in the fields of fashion, technology, finance and beyond.
Indiana valued double-association in his work, frequently exploring verbal-visual themes such as the number 66, which he liked both for its visual pattern and its connection to his childhood. A self-proclaimed painter of signs, he followed Pop Art’s embrace of fabrication and commercialization while rejecting the academicism of Abstract Expressionism. Along with the signs of his youth, Indiana combined the geometric, colorful flatness of Ellsworth Kelly’s works with the themes of Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns to create his own unique style. One Through Zero (The Ten Numbers) monumentalizes one of the most important motifs of Indiana’s oeuvre. Their playful color and appealingly commercial typography are intriguingly complicated by their potential for recreation; by arranging and rearranging their order, one may place oneself in dialogue with Indiana and form new meanings from symbols hundreds of years old.