Color Fuses

“My hope is that, on a dark and cold night, people passing the radiant, changing colors of the mural might feel related to one another because they have shared the experience. Whenever I’ve been able to create anything that makes an audience feel they are part of a larger community, I feel I’ve chosen the right path for my life.”  – Milton Glaser

The 35 bands of color that wrap around the Minton-Capehart Federal Building are the work of world-renowned graphic artist Milton Glaser. Titled Color Fuses, the mural was commissioned in 1974 through the U.S. General Services Administration’s Art in Architecture Program.

Glaser was selected from a pool of some of the day’s most acclaimed artists to create a site-specific artwork in collaboration with Evan Woollen, the building’s architect. Woollen envisioned a colorful piece capable of softening the severity of his Brutalist-style design. As he put it, art provided an opportunity “to breathe life and humanity into the building at street level.” [1] Glaser created an artwork that engages the architecture while enlivening viewers’ experiences of the site.

At the time it was installed, Color Fuses was one of the world’s largest contiguous murals, measuring 672 feet in length. Execution of the work presented technical challenges, requiring close supervision by the artist. Local painting contractors used extreme care to airbrush the paint directly onto the 27-foot-high elevations, which included concrete walls, stairwells and doors. Special methods had to be developed to allow workers to seamlessly blend each of the vibrant colors, while competing with factors such as wind and humidity. The resulting polychromatic ribbon brightens the pedestrian experience and lends the building a more energized look and feel.

Color Fuses celebrates the interplay of color and light. To further this effect, Glaser programmed the exterior perimeter lighting to illuminate the mural in a slow rise and fall sequence at night. This rhythm alluded to the gradual rising and setting of the sun, and the timeless wonder associated with the qualities of light as it shifts and reveals itself on the horizon.

Despite being a signature project by one of the nation’s most accomplished visual artists, Color Fuses was left untreated for decades. Over time, the mural’s pigments faded and the outdated lighting system became inoperable. In 2012, as part of a broader building-modernization project, GSA’s Fine Arts Program successfully led a team that included Glaser, art conservators, designers, and many others to fully restore the mural to the artist’s original vision.

Located along Indianapolis’s famed American Legion Mall—one of the city’s most visible and well-used public corridors—the brilliant colors and lively elegance of Color Fuses affirms the potential for art to radically enhance public architecture and the civic landscape.

Note:

[1] Donald W. Thalacker, The Place of Art in the World of Architecture (New York, London: Chelsea House Publishers, 1980), 69.