1991.23
Fur K. V. K.
Artist
Robert Indiana (Robert Clark)
(New Castle, Indiana, 9/13/1928 - 5/19/2018, Vinalhaven, Maine)
Title
Fur K. V. K.
Creation Date
1990
Century
20th century
Dimensions
30 1/16 in. x 38 1/4 in. (76.28 cm. x 97.23 cm.)
Object Type
print
Creation Place
North America, United States, Maine
Medium and Support
lithograph on paper
Credit Line
Anonymous Gift and Museum Purchase, Lloyd O. and Marjorie Strong Coulter Fund
Copyright
This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s
Copyright Terms and Conditions.
Accession Number
1991.23
Best known for his iconic "LOVE" series, Robert Indiana began in 1963 to create a group of paintings that responded to early American modernist non-mimetic portraits. In "The Demuth American Dream No. 5" (1963), Indiana pays homage to Charles Demuth and his symbolic portrait of poet William Carlos Williams, "I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold" (1928). In the 1990s Indiana revisited this type of coded portrait in works like "Für K. v. F.", a direct response to Marsden Hartley’s German officer portraits. Through letter forms, military accoutrements, and flag imagery, the works in that series reference Karl von Freyburg, the object of Hartley’s unrequited affections. By including “HARTLEY” at the bottom of his own work, Indiana makes explicit the connection between Hartley and Freyburg. Implicitly, he alludes to his own sexual orientation. Through his many layers of encoding likeness, desire, and inspiration, Indiana engages a powerful dynamic of concealment and revelation, memory and identity that incorporates public emblems and shared experience and renders them deeply personal. Indiana’s own graphic influence can be seen in the button “RIOT”' one of the pins that L.J. Roberts has recreated in embroidery, on view nearby.
