Signs of Love
1976Oil on plywood
In 1976, Ree created a large installation that covers all registers of the archetypal sentimental love story. The work Signs of Love explores all the visual possibilities of how emotional states can be represented. In early 1975, Ree wrote in one of her sketchbooks about the absence of feelings in contemporary art: "Whatever happened to feeling? The absence of sentiment is what bothers me about so much work around." With Signs of Love, she wanted to radically affirm sentimentality and make it a legitimate subject of art.
The artist tried out several versions of Signs of Love. She developed two variations of eight words, one version consisting of cut-out felt letters, the other of painted panels. The version with the panels, which can be seen in the following three images, was installed in 1976 in the Fine Arts Center of the University of Rhode Island, Kingston.
Here are parts of the installation Signs of Love in her studio, including some painted panels.
This is the later version of Signs of Love with felt letters. The image is from an exhibition of the work at the Whitney Museum in New York.
The exhibition To Each Concrete Man features four panels of Signs of Love. The following photos show several variations. In addition to versions with a monochrome background, Ree also made more expressive ones.