Robert Indiana - Evening & Day Editions London Wednesday, December 11, 2013 | Phillips

Evening & Day Editions

London 12 December 2013 2pm & 6pm

  • Provenance

    Coskun Fine Art, London

  • Catalogue Essay

    When asked by David Ebony in an interview for Art in America in 2008, “what is the most significant number for you now, and why?”, Indiana responded, “Obviously it’s number 2. That’s the number of love; it takes two to love. It’s been the chief preoccupation of my life.”

    As a pioneer of the verbal-visual motif, Robert Indiana’s paintings and sculptures of numbers resonate with complex meaning, and have endured as one of his most important iconographic motifs. The works can be read as a quantity, a date, a sign, but also as purely aesthetic forms, rich with a poetic condensation of Indiana’s constant engagement with the symbolic, metaphorical and formal aspects of numbers. Indiana has emphasised that each number has a specific personal and allegorical resonance, acting as either autobiographical landmarks for his own upbringing or as milestones in the cycle of life itself. For Indiana, the number one represents birth, the start of an ascendance through adolescence to maturity, ending with the number zero: death. Within this cycle, Stainless Steel Sculptures: Two is a monumental example of the special significance that the number two holds. Two is created from 1; from Adam came Eve, marrying union and separation. “You must be 2 to love” says Indiana, and the curving arc of the weighty sculpture suggests an immovable connective arm that loops around an ever-present companion. The number two is significant not just in its form - organically growing from 1, yet still anticipating the balanced curves of 3 – but in the magnitude of its allegorical importance to Indiana.

PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE SWISS COLLECTOR

13

Robert Indiana

Stainless Steel Numbers: Two

1978-2003
Stainless steel sculpture with black base,
including base 45.5 x 45.5 x 25.5 cm (17 7/8 x 17 7/8 x 10 in.)
incise signed 'R Indiana', and incise numbered '5/8', also incised '© 1978-2003' on lower right side (there were also 2 artist's proofs), manufactured by Milgo, Brooklyn (with incised foundry stamp), in excellent condition.

Estimate
£40,000 - 60,000 ‡

Sold for £50,000

Contact Specialist
Robert Kennan
Editions, London
rkennan@phillips.com
+44 207 318 4075

Evening & Day Editions

London 12 December 2013 2pm & 6pm