Robert Indiana: New Perspectives

Self-described as an “American painter of signs,” Robert Indiana (born 1928) has interpreted the postwar American semiotic landscape through a unique merging of Pop's graphic snap with American modernist painting's codes of sexuality and use of advertising designs. Best known for his iconic rendition of the word “love,” over the past 50 years Indiana has created a major body of work that spans the movements of assemblage, hard-edged abstraction and Pop art. This book surveys his career from the early 1960s to the present, also convening new scholarship on this important artist by writers such as Thomas Crow and Robert Storr. Addressing topics ranging from Indiana's politically engaged works, his formative years in the Coentie's Slip artistic community in downtown Manhattan, Indiana's place within Pop and his allegorical depictions of gender and family, this book reevaluates and reorients some of Indiana's most significant works.