Arthur Carr: What are your associations to “Eat.”

Robert Indiana: The first, the first association, Arthur, and the most important one as far as painting is concerned, is, of course, the fact that “Eat” was the last word that my mother said before she died. And the whole “Eat-Die” diptych series of paintings is related to that one specific experience. Then, of course, “Eat” goes back much father and fills a large, shall we say, part of my life because my, well—first of all, back even further, it always seemed the, shall we say, the happiest moments of my childhood and those which were most exciting were these big family reunions where, where eating was the most important thing.”