Robert Indiana, Visiting Artist Lecture 1969

Robert Indiana gives a lecture at Skowhegan in which he discusses his experience as an art student in Chicago, and his experience as a student at Skowhegan in 1953. Some of the themes he describes in his work include a focus on advertisement, pop culture, narrative, and landscape. He mostly works in oil and occasionally acrylic, preferring oil because it offers more compatibility and flexibility. Indiana explains how he is interested in the metamorphosis of transformation for ordinary people into celebrity icons, specifically talking about his portrait of Marilyn Monroe. Throughout his lecture, Indiana references many pop artists and shows a series of slides that depict them in paintings, assemblages, and sculptures. Other themes in Indiana’s work include the study of American capitalism, American literature, and racial hierarchies in the South. Indiana believes that an artist’s proper place is the studio, however sometimes breaks are necessary, which Indiana embarks on by leaving the studio and being among community. Indiana ends his lecture with discussion of the importance of resistance to paranoia or lack of appreciation, and not to dwell on these feelings.