‘Robert Indiana with Kennedy’s Contact Sheets’, 1963 - WILLIAM JOHN KENNEDY (WJK)

Robert Indiana with Kennedy’s Contact Sheets, New York City

Silver gelatin Fiber print
16 x 20 inches / 40.6 x 50.8 cm

16/60

As a founding father of the POP ART movement Robert Indiana (born Robert Clark in the state of Indiana in 1928) is most widely celebrated for his LOVE series – the most reproduced artwork in history, his work is most recently exhibited at PACE, New York (May 9 - Aug 15 - 2025), alongside various early works that provided a typically blunt critique of consumerism. But alongside LOVE the openly gay artist also created a lesser-known diptych entitled EAT/DIE, which juxtaposed the words, EAT and DIE in red and black capital letters.

This work explored themes of life, death and US cultural mores in a stark juxtaposition of consumption and mortality. The standalone “DIE” image in the EAT/DIE room in UNSEEN INDIANA, for ex- ample, references the artist’s own mother’s dying breath, brilliantly exemplifying his unique ability to blend the personal and political. In capturing the artist with his work the photographer William John Kennedy brought a profoundly human quality to pieces that might otherwise be considered unsettling.