Octagon 1975

Robert Indiana made this screenprint 'Octagon' in 1975, though I wish I knew more about how it was made, which colours were laid down first. With screenprinting you kind of work backwards, right? I'm looking at the way the colours interact: the purple of the background, and the golden yellow of the number 8. A punchy combination! It's so flat but that allows the colours to really vibrate. The graphic elements - the octagon shape, the word 'octagon' - all work together. That brown octagon contained within the red circle creates a subtle tension, pushing against that clean geometry. Indiana seems to be borrowing from hard-edge abstraction while also making something that feels totally his own. Like Ellsworth Kelly but a little more... human? I like to think of artmaking as an ongoing conversation. We can never know exactly what an artist intended, and that's part of what makes it so exciting.