Robert Indiana (b. 1928)

This work will be included in the forthcoming Robert Indiana Catalogue Raisonné being prepared by Simon Salama-Caro.

LOVE constitutes a principal example of Indianas system: built according to his usual cruciform axis, cut into two monosyllabic units, the word seems reduced to its mere letters, to the gigantic, three-dimensional forms of its stacked letters. In its graspable, materialistic, commodified volumetric, and threatening presence, the sculpture: LOVE, also, undeniably, and inescapably evokes the artists own warning: Know that the LOVE I am talking about is spiritual. At the same time, the O?this has not often been mentioned?is an italicized O: it is tilting away, threatening to fall off the lower rank of letters VE, and break the complete square structure of these four neatly composed letters. In other words, spiritual as its message may be, LOVE also indicates that precarity, fragility, break up are almost inevitably part of the story... "(J. Pissaro, Robert Indiana, 2006, New York, p. 72).