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Lot Essay
“In a sense, I got down to the subject matter of my work ... the subject is defined by its expression in the word itself ... LOVE is purely a skeleton of all that word has meant in all the erotic and religious aspects of the theme, and to bring it down to the actual structure of calligraphy [is to reduce it] to the bare bone.” Robert Indiana
The word 'Love' initially surfaced in Indiana's work in his 1958 poem 'Wherefore the Punctuation of the Heart' which revealed his admiration of E.E. Cummings and Gertrude Stein. Its first appearance in painted form came six years later when the artist traced 'Love is God' onto a diamond shaped canvas, inverting a common church motto of his youth. As Indiana explained "In a sense, I got down to the subject matter of my work ... the subject is defined by its expression in the word itself ... LOVE is purely a skeleton of all that word has meant in all the erotic and religious aspects of the theme, and to bring it down to the actual structure of calligraphy [is to reduce it] to the bare bone." (Robert Indiana, quoted in T. Brakeley (ed.), Robert Indiana, New York 1990, p. 168).
A commission from the Museum of Modern Art followed for a painting to be reproduced on a greetings card. Indiana had by then distilled his concept and its image to its essence and presented a canvas comprising the four red letters of 'Love' stacked against a blue and green background. Rejecting linear display, the artist assembled the word in a square block, with one letter in each quadrant.
The word 'Love' initially surfaced in Indiana's work in his 1958 poem 'Wherefore the Punctuation of the Heart' which revealed his admiration of E.E. Cummings and Gertrude Stein. Its first appearance in painted form came six years later when the artist traced 'Love is God' onto a diamond shaped canvas, inverting a common church motto of his youth. As Indiana explained "In a sense, I got down to the subject matter of my work ... the subject is defined by its expression in the word itself ... LOVE is purely a skeleton of all that word has meant in all the erotic and religious aspects of the theme, and to bring it down to the actual structure of calligraphy [is to reduce it] to the bare bone." (Robert Indiana, quoted in T. Brakeley (ed.), Robert Indiana, New York 1990, p. 168).
A commission from the Museum of Modern Art followed for a painting to be reproduced on a greetings card. Indiana had by then distilled his concept and its image to its essence and presented a canvas comprising the four red letters of 'Love' stacked against a blue and green background. Rejecting linear display, the artist assembled the word in a square block, with one letter in each quadrant.