Robert Indiana

Guy Pieters Gallery, Knokke-Heist
Galleria Flora Bigai, Pietrasanta
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2006

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the blue is lighter in the original. Condition: This work is in good condition. Close inspection reveals a small number of surface losses in a few isolated places along the extreme outer edges, notably to the outer edge of the O. There are a few short, light rub marks scattered in places. There are a few extreme outer edges that appear to be slightly raised. Close inspection reveals a tiny crack to the lower inside of the letter E.
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“In a sense I got down to the subject matter of my work, to its bare bones: the subject is defined by its expression in the word itself. I mean LOVE is purely a skeleton of all that word has meant in all the erotic and religious aspects of the theme... It was really a matter of distillation."
Robert Indiana quoted in: Robert Storr et al., Robert Indiana: New Perspectives, Ostfildern 2012, p. 68

Robert Indiana’s quest for the distillation of his subject-matter that would culminate in the artist’s iconic LOVE works, started with an exploration of his immediate surroundings. Like Robert Rauschenberg, Indiana found inspiration in the proximity of his studio where brass stencils from nineteenth century maritime companies fuelled his interest in typography. After extensive experiments with the newly discovered stencilling technique, the artist arrived at one of the most original and iconic designs of the twentieth century. Initially used as a Christmas postcard by the Museum of Modern Art in 1964, the magnetic pull of Indiana’s LOVE motif became the perfect embodiment of the love-generation.

Although Indiana’s pop icon vividly captured the universal message of his age and is of paramount historical importance, the work’s timeless appeal is equally astonishing. This year may mark the fiftieth anniversary of the LOVE design, but its visual impact has not diminished in the slightest. The clever amalgam of its four letters, with the signature negative space within the characteristically tilted O, creates a visual punch that instantly captivates and remains ingrained in our collective retinal memory. As Robert Storr observed, “no matter how the setting darkened, Indiana’s LOVE logo remained an agelessly stylish symbol of a cultural-preeminent sexual-sea change” (op. cit. p. 11).

Indiana’s work is firmly embedded in the radical artistic discoveries of the 1960s. Like his close friend Ellsworth Kelley, he was interested in hard-edge painting, which reverberates in the present work through its bright colours and clearly defined contours. Moreover, the artist’s interest in signage and typography is a crucial characteristic of the concerns with commercial culture in the 1960s. Similar to Ed Ruscha’s word paintings, Indiana’s lexicographical sculpture is both easily accessible and highly complex in its meaning through the multiplicity of religious, erotic, personal and political connotations. Robert Indiana’s LOVE therefore compellingly captures a unique historical moment, whilst it is also in dialogue with many of the most important postwar artistic developments - from pop art to abstraction to linguistic conceptualism - making the sculpture not only a visually striking example of timeless design, but also of Indiana’s important contributions to the development of postwar art history.