Robert Indiana

Morgan Art Foundation, Geneva (acquired directly from the artist)
Private Collection, Luxembourg (acquired from the above and sold: Sotheby's, London, June 21, 2006, lot 57)
Acquired at the above sale by A. Alfred Taubman

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One of the most iconic images of Pop Art and Contemporary American culture, Robert Indiana’s Love is as instantly recognizable as Andy Warhol’s soup cans or Jasper Johns’ flags. While the Love imagery existed initially as a two-dimensional, painted form, it is its sculptural iteration that has achieved such lauded fame in Indiana’s oeuvre and within a broader art-historical context.

In the present work, the 36-inch Love is coated in a bright, shimmering blue patina, with rich, vibrant red peeking through from the insides of the letters. The work is instantly recognizable and eye-catching; there is an immediacy to the color and form that is visually alluring and harmonious as well as a directness of the text itself. Love brings to fruition the architectural weight of the compositional form. Compactly stacked in monosyllabic units, the letters commit to the square format, the O tilting to the right so as to fill its allotted space. Love represents the artist's ability to create something of both conceptual and physical importance while maintaining tangibility through its volumetric and linguistic simplicity, and its relation to the human scale.

Throughout his career, Indiana has been fascinated by the importance of signs within American visual culture and their ability to encapsulate intangible meanings, desires, and emotions through language reduced to the subtle placement of minimal but straightforward and accessible words. Realizing the potential of language in graphic art, Indiana sought to emulate this simplicity of transmission within his own work, condensing his personal experiences into contemporary signage. Love was the first time that the artist edited the subject of his art to a single word, yet the immediacy and directness of this commanding message does not preclude a wealth of possible meanings and connotations; its simplicity belies that signs are never neutral, nor empty.