Plate (page 52) from 1¢ Life
Robert Indiana
American, 1928–2018
1964
A two-color lithograph printed as a page in an illustrated book in which Robert Indiana pairs a simplified pop‑art mouth with blunt, stencil‑like wording to provoke and question sexual and commercial taboos.
The eye is immediately hit by the flat, saturated yellow field and bold crimson lips hovering above the stenciled demand “SEX ANYONE,” a graphic, billboard‑like image set against the adjacent page’s dense, typewritten block that reads like a frantic stream of text.
The plate shows how 1960s Pop artists turned advertising aesthetics and plain language into art—using mass‑produced, text‑driven imagery to destabilize fine‑art hierarchies and force public conversations about sex, commerce, and reproduction of images.
Medium
Lithograph from an illustrated book with sixty-two lithographs and reproductions
Dimensions
composition: 15 1/4 × 11 1/8" (38.7 × 28.2 cm); page (irreg.): 16 1/8 × 11 7/16" (41 × 29 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of the author, Walasse Ting, the editor, Sam Francis, and the publisher, E. W. Kornfeld
Accession
1164.1964.17
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
