Praise for The Isolation Artist: Scandal, Deception, and the Last Days of Robert Indiana
"Keyes' book reads like a mystery, with a cast of art dealers, lawyers, caregivers, and assistants, many of who were treated badly by Indiana, many of whom made a lot of money from their association with him. And his case of death ruled inconclusive by a medical examiner."
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PBS News Hour "Engrossing....This hard-hitting exposé of the contemporary art world and one of its controversial figures deserves a wide audience."
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Publishers Weekly "Keyes' book reads almost like a mystery novel; it's a gripping look at a unique and profoundly sad man. Even if you're not an art aficionado, you'll find it hard to put down."
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NPR, "Books We Love" "There are enough characters involved to put a prestige HBO drama series to shame ... Keyes's book intrigues because of the mysteries at its core..."
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ARTnews "Bob Keyes' new page-turner, exploring what shaped and plagued the artist behind the famous LOVE statues, will captivate any art lover."
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Down East "A book that is both cautionary and tantalizing–forensic in its pursuit of detail, but not without innuendo and speculation in what it allows those details to suggest."
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Brooklyn Rail "Shrewd and riveting...a spellbinding cautionary tale about the tricky business of mixing art with commerce...Keyes approaches his first book with a scholar's attention to detail and a muckraker's doggedness."
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Shelf Awareness "A highly readable and thoroughly researched piece of investigative journalism. Bob Keyes tackles it squarely and with genuine compassion."
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Maine Sunday Telegram "Bob Keyes has constructed an aptly circular narrative to explore Robert Indiana's LOVE-less hoarding of hurt in a Maine-island fortress worthy of Stephen King or Jeffrey Epstein. Connecting the dots, from Indiana's classic Sixties stand for art over money, to his later-life King Baby rage at the money-mad art world he believed had gypped him, Keyes's fast-paced investigation reveals the ever-diminishing forms that Indiana's grandiose self-deceit took as he seduced ringkissers and faked four-letter remakes, cashing in on the kind of decamillion-dollar grift and plunder that made the artist's final days a signpost for the too-much-but-never-enough era that is still defrauding LOVE and HOPE."
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David Michaelis, author of
N. C. Wyeth: A Biography "In this disturbing account of the murky final years of a famous, self-sabotaging artist, Bob Keyes teases out the competing motivations and frequent skullduggery of a jaw-dropping cast of opportunists, takers, frauds, and hangers-on. It reads like a spy novel; I was riveted."
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Monica Wood, author of
The One-in-a-Million Boy "
The Isolation Artist is a scandalously good tale of intrigue set on a remote Maine island and featuring a rogue's gallery of art hucksters, small-town grifters, and self-dealing drug addicts. But the chief rogue in Bob Keyes's masterful investigation is Robert Indiana, a troubled genius who was often more trouble than he was worth and whose death has revealed webs of deceit that Keyes excels in unspinning."
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Paul Doiron, author of the Mike Bowditch series
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The Isolation Artist is a richly-reported tale of artistic genius undone by extravagance, greed, and age. Bob Keyes has delivered a singular book, revealing all the players and palace intrigue surrounding the life–and controversial death–of American icon Robert Indiana. I've been a fan of Keyes' work for years, and this feels like a book he was born to write, cracking the hard exteriors of the New York City art world and a remote Maine island for the complicated truth within."
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Michael Paterniti, author of
Love and Other Ways of Dying
