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拍品专文
Please note that this work will be included in the forthcoming Robert Indiana catalogue raisonne being prepared by Simon Salama-Caro.
Robert Indiana's LOVE is both a formal abstract configuration and a shaped poem, its dual nature as both imperative utterance and artwork, what Indiana himself described as a 'verbal-visual' act, fires an extraordinary sonic and optical intensity. The letters themselves, nestled, rubbing together, insinuate a physicality and tactility that resonate with the intended affect. As a visual image, it is emblematic of a time and place in American socio-political history even as it derives from a torrent of art-historical influences. Finding one's artistic style in 1950s New York would be a struggle for any artist and Indiana acknowledges as much in his hard-edged reductive geometry for LOVE.
"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.)
Indiana's LOVE paintings and sculptures had humble beginnings. Having seen the word "love" in multiple guises, written in Christian Science books, imprinted on the spare walls of his church, the artist spent decades thinking through its possible meanings. Artistically first conceived in 1958 as a shaped poem after Apollinaire and other early modernists, including Gertrude Stein, Indiana stacked LO over VE, the O canted slyly to one side. Eight years on, Indiana transposed this configuration to a block of aluminum, carved out for the Stable Gallery (1966). A request from the Museum of Modern Art to use the artwork for Christmas cards followed shortly. Originally made up in a range of colors from black and white to up to five colors, the museum chose the three-color version, red, green, and blue. In the present six foot form, the red and blue LOVE is language at giant scale. It is vibrant and dynamic as the O tilts to the side, there is an undeniable sense of visual movement.
Robert Indiana with his first monumental LOVE at Lippincot Metalworks, New Haven, Connecticut, 1970.
(c) 2008 Morgan Art Foundation, Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photography by Tom Rummler.
Robert Indiana's LOVE is both a formal abstract configuration and a shaped poem, its dual nature as both imperative utterance and artwork, what Indiana himself described as a 'verbal-visual' act, fires an extraordinary sonic and optical intensity. The letters themselves, nestled, rubbing together, insinuate a physicality and tactility that resonate with the intended affect. As a visual image, it is emblematic of a time and place in American socio-political history even as it derives from a torrent of art-historical influences. Finding one's artistic style in 1950s New York would be a struggle for any artist and Indiana acknowledges as much in his hard-edged reductive geometry for LOVE.
"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.)
Indiana's LOVE paintings and sculptures had humble beginnings. Having seen the word "love" in multiple guises, written in Christian Science books, imprinted on the spare walls of his church, the artist spent decades thinking through its possible meanings. Artistically first conceived in 1958 as a shaped poem after Apollinaire and other early modernists, including Gertrude Stein, Indiana stacked LO over VE, the O canted slyly to one side. Eight years on, Indiana transposed this configuration to a block of aluminum, carved out for the Stable Gallery (1966). A request from the Museum of Modern Art to use the artwork for Christmas cards followed shortly. Originally made up in a range of colors from black and white to up to five colors, the museum chose the three-color version, red, green, and blue. In the present six foot form, the red and blue LOVE is language at giant scale. It is vibrant and dynamic as the O tilts to the side, there is an undeniable sense of visual movement.
Robert Indiana with his first monumental LOVE at Lippincot Metalworks, New Haven, Connecticut, 1970.
(c) 2008 Morgan Art Foundation, Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photography by Tom Rummler.