LOVE – its four letters economically stacked in a square with a tilted ‘O’ – was born from the premise that the word itself can be an appropriated and useable element of art. After a period of working with whole passages of text, Robert Indiana returned to the single word, a fixture of his earlier artworks.
The iconography first appeared in a series of poems written by Indiana in 1958, in which he stacked ‘LO’ on top of ‘VE’. A few years later in 1964, he used it in a design for a Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Christmas card. The colour scheme – red letters against a blue and green background – referred to the Phillips 66 gas station at which his father worked during the Great Depression.
Indiana’s first LOVE sculpture took form in 1966. The sculptural idea drew on his memories of the posters that adorned the walls of the Christian Science churches he attended as a child. They read “GOD is LOVE”. Carved from a block of aluminium, the sculpture was first exhibited at the Stable Gallery. It is now on permanent display at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
From 1966 onwards, LOVE proliferated. It took many different forms – as a sculpture, screenprint, silkscreen and painting among others. It was fast co-opted as an emblem of 1960s idealism, a symbol of peace for many people who had become disillusioned with the violence of governments and the threat of nuclear war. One of its most famous renditions was as a US postage stamp in 1973.
Today, the image continues to be celebrated across the world and Indiana has created alternative versions, with 'LOVE' translated into different languages including French, Hebrew and Chinese. Recent iterations include a parody of the image on a record cover by the band, Oasis, and a variation by Indiana for Google on Valentine’s Day in 2011.
Read an extract of an interview with Robert Indiana about LOVE
A solo exhibition of Robert Indiana is currently on show at ContiniArtUK, London, until 31 January 2016. Find out more.
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All images by Robert Indiana © 2015 Morgan Art Foundation Ltd. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, DACS, London.