“In a sense I got down to the subject matter of my work, to its bare bones: the subject is defined by its expression in the word itself. I mean LOVE is purely a skeleton of all that word has meant in all the erotic and religious aspects of the theme... It was really a matter of distillation"
Initially used as a Christmas postcard by the Museum of Modern Art in 1964, the magnetic pull of Robert Indiana’s LOVE motif became the perfect embodiment of the love-generation. Although Indiana’s pop icon vividly captured the universal message of his age and is of paramount historical importance, the work’s t.mes less appeal is equally astonishing, as its visual impact has not diminished in the slightest. The clever amalgam of its four letters with the signature negative space within the characteristically tilted O, creates a visual punch that instantly captivates and remains ingrained in our collects ive memory. As Robert Storr observed, “no matter how the setting darkened, Indiana’s LOVE logo remained an agelessly stylish symbol of a cultural-preeminent sexual-sea change” (Robert Storr et al., Robert Indiana: New Perspectives, Ostfildern 2012, p. 11).
Artwork: © Ed Ruscha
When recalling the birth of the LOVE series, the artist referenced memories of his childhood in Indiana, the state whose name he adopted over that of his birth in 1958. Recollects ions of youthful church attendance provided a crucial spark of inspiration: “The reason I became so involved in [it] is that it is so much a part of the peculiar American environment, particularly in my own background, which was Christian Scientist. ‘God is Love’ is spelled out in every church” (Robert Indiana cited in: Ibid., p. 154). Indeed, the first appearance of the Love theme within Indiana’s oeuvre, a work entitled Love is God from 1964, neatly inverted the message projected from the religious signboards that had made such an impression on the young artist. The eponymous quadrilateral LOVE motif emerged within Indiana’s work shortly afterwards, and rapidly became an emblem of an era which peaked with the so called ‘Summer of Love’ in 1967.
“The reason I became so involved in [it] is that it is so much a part of the peculiar American environment, particularly in my own background, which was Christian Scientist. ‘God is Love’ is spelled out in every church”
Like his close friend Ellsworth Kelley, Indiana was interested in hard-edge painting, which reverberates in the present work through its bright red and iridescent golden interior, and clearly defined contours. Moreover, the artist’s interest in signage and typography is a crucial characteristic of the concerns with commercial culture in the 1960s. Similar to Ed Ruscha’s word paintings, Indiana’s lexicographical sculpture is both easily accessible and highly complex in its meaning through the multiplicity of religious, erotic, personal and political connotations. Indiana’s LOVE therefore captures a unique historical moment, whilst it is also in dialogue with many of the most important postwar artistic developments - from pop art to abstraction to linguistic conceptualism - making the sculpture not only a visually striking example of t.mes
less design, but also of Indiana’s important contributions to the development of postwar art history.