
Morisa Rosenberg
Head of Department
Sold for US$127,500 inc. premium
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Coskun Fine Art, London
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner
Robert Indiana saw his 'LOVE' as a one-word poem and its instantly recognizable form is truly an example of typographic prose. The image — the word love in capitalized letters, stacked in two lines within a square, a forward leaning O in the top right quadrant — is an icon of pop culture. Beyond its consistent presence in Indiana's studio, LOVE became a symbol of youthful idealism and counter-culture, being widely reproduced without his authorization in an array of things from mugs to trinkets. The image was initially commissioned by MoMA for the 1964 Christmas card and was later featured as the first 'love stamp' for the United States Postal Service in 1973. Indiana returned to his LOVE image throughout his career in many forms: sculptures, paintings, and prints.
In Book of Love, the largest of any LOVE print series, Indiana iterates the image through twelve different colorways paired with twelve of his own poems. Where LOVE on its own became a symbol, Book of Love communicates Indiana's more complicated contemplations of the illusion and disillusion of love and the world — the same emotions that inspired the destabilizing O in the composition.