Run, don't walk, if you are in San Antonio, to see the Robert Indiana exhibit, "Beyond Love," at the McNay Art Institute, though May 25. It is stunning, thought provoking, fun, lively, colorful and will broaden your perspective on this "outlier" of the pop art movement. Indiana has a couple of interesting connections to San Antonio -- he designed the poster for HemisFair '68, which gave me my first "real" job in San Antonio, and Indiana was (briefly) at Lackland for basic training when he enlisted in the Army Air Corp in 1947.
Indeed, Indiana never considered himself a pop artist, though his text and graphic works were created during the same time frame as Lichtenstein's and Warhol's works. Indiana's large paintings have an entirely different emotional quality to them, and indeed the artist worked in his characteristic style it seems, not so much to make a commentary on the commercialism and consumerism of Western modern life, but rather to explore the aspects, failures and successes of the American Dream in its most basic elements. In addition to the main exhibit the McNay also is showing a number of the stunning homage large scale prints in the series, These pieces, reference Indiana's relationship with Ellsworth Kelly, and are also a direct homage to one of the artists who inspired him, Marsden Hartley, whose symbol filled series honoring Karl von Freyburg, provide the visual and emotional framework for Indiana's serigraphs. (It's easy to see Hartley's influence in his use of primary colors and simple shapes and the inclusion of text.)
"Fascinated that early American Modernist and Maine native Marsden Hartley had spent a summer on Vinalhaven, Indiana set out to pay homage to the older artist. In the “Hartley Elegies” Indiana played off Hartley’s colorful, symbol-filled series honoring Karl von Freyburg, a handsome German officer with whom Hartley was in love.
The 18 paintings in the series replicated Hartley’s compositions — the vivid palette and compressed military imagery — signs, symbols, letters, flags, medals, epaulettes — as a means to commemorate a lover. The “Hartley Elegies” are among the finest achievements of Indiana’s career."
There is also an exhibit of costumes (reproduced for a more recent performance) designed by Indiana for the opera The Mother of Us All, by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thompson 1947 opera inspired by Susan B. Anthony. Any textile or fiber artist will find these all-felt costumes fascinating, and their relationship to the original costume designs enlightening. These are in the collection of the McNay's Tobin Collection of Theatre Arts.
My visit to the exhibit was enriched by reading this New York Times review from the exhibit launch at the Whitney Museum in New York. And even more interesting, this one, from the Wall Street Journal OnLine.
