Robert Indiana's popular LOVE works have made the esteemed Pop artist a household name. Their fame and ubiquity have also served to eclipse the rest of his dynamic, conceptually charged work. Robert Indiana: The American Dream is a compelling reassessment of the artist's contributions to American art during his long and prolific career. Indiana (b. 1928) has explored the power of language, American identity and personal history for five decades. Although visually dazzling and apparently cheerful on the surface, his imagery has a depth and a darkness that draws on his own biography as well as on the myths, history and literature of the United States. This insightful book repositions him as a seminal figure of the 1960s and 1970s, whose artistic genius combined Pop Art, hard-edged abstraction and language-based conceptualism. With a generous illustration programme, an appendix of the artist's interviews and statements, and essays by leading experts, this book provides a long overdue analysis of the development of Indiana's career, his relationship to early 20th century American painters, and his influence on contemporary language-based artists. In addition to a chronology, selected exhibition history, and selected bibliography, Robert Indiana includes the transcript from a round table discussion with renowned scholars including Thomas Crow, Robert Storr, John Wilmerding and Robert Pincus-Witten offering thoughts on the significance of Indiana and his art.
