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Robert Indiana (1928-2018); Book of Love; (24) image 1
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Lot 165

Robert Indiana
(1928-2018)
Book of Love 24

26 March 2024, 10:00 PDT
Los Angeles

Sold for US$127,500 inc. premium

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Robert Indiana (1928-2018)

Book of Love, 1996
The complete portfolio, comprising twelve screenprints in colors on A.N.W. Creswood Museum Edition paper, each signed in pencil, dated and numbered XII/L (there was also an edition of 200 in Arabic numerals plus 15 artist's proofs), with the twelve poems with embossing, each numbered in pencil, 4 dated and 11 signed, published by American Image Edition, New York, 1997, loose (as issued), lacking title and justification page, with the original cardboard portfolio, with full margins, each framed. (24)
18 1/8 x 17 7/8in (46 x 45.4cm)
sheet 23 7/8 x 19 13/16 (60.6 x 50.3cm)

Footnotes

Provenance
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.

Additional information

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