Numbers 1-9 (2) 1983

This work, Numbers 1-9 (2), was made by Robert Indiana, but the date is unknown. I’m thinking about Indiana in his studio, maybe in the seventies, and these colours, chartreuse and royal blue, are so of that moment. But the forms are utterly his. I see these curved areas of colour, how the blue form unfurls, and how the light catches it, and I imagine him trying to get that curve just right. I can see him sanding back the surface, wanting it to be as smooth as a car door, and those edges as clean as a graphic. I think of Ellsworth Kelly and other hard-edge painters. This work seems like a part of a longer conversation among painters about how geometry, colour, and form can be used to create new kinds of space and depth. And it reminds me that painting is always a kind of back-and-forth, where artists are responding to and building upon each other’s ideas, trying to push the boundaries of what painting can be.