INDIANA, Robert

Initially classified among the Pop Artists, Indiana is actually a word painter, which is to say that the innovation of his very best paintings comes from making them mostly, if not exclusively, of language. Using bold letters and sometimes numbers, rendered in the clean-edge tradition of American commercial sign painting, Indiana exposes very short Americanisms to art, or vice versa, establishing himself as a master of color, shape, and craftsmanship (though repetitiously favoring Roman letters and...