LOVE in the USA

Written by jenniferaradhya
Artist Robert Indiana (1928-2018)

We could all use a little extra LOVE this Fourth of July as the year 2020 has challenged us in many ways.

For the past few years, my family and I have taken road trips this week to discover new areas of this great country and learn more about our history and people in unfamiliar states. We have marked the 4th of July in different states each year. Last year, we stood as a family on a bridge in downtown Minneapolis watching an incredible fireworks display. This year we social distance.

Many of our road trips have involved much LOVE – of the real and Robert Indiana type. I love LOVE and try to make a point of seeing as many of Robert Indiana’s iconic works as I can in my travels. If artist Robert Indiana is an unfamiliar name, allow me to introduce him to you.

Robert Indiana is the quintessential American artist (1928-2018) who returned frequently to autobiographical motifs, symbols, and imagery. He built a body of work that reflected what it meant to be an American artist.

Robert Indiana was born Robert Clark in New Castle, Indiana, and was adopted as an infant by Earl Clark and Carmen Watters. Earl worked pumping gas at a filling station and Carmen worked as a waitress.

After serving for three years in the United States Army Air Forces, Indiana studied at the Art Institute of Chicago (1949–1953), the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine (summer 1953) and Edinburgh University and Edinburgh College of Art (1953–1954).[5] He returned to the United States in 1954 and settled in NYC.

While living in NYC on the Coenties Slip in the 1950s, a location that attracted artists Agnes Martin, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Ellsworth Kelly, Indiana discovered stencils once used to decorate ships. He adopted those stencils for his own practice, using them not only to make paintings but also to adorn remarkable totemic wooden sculptures that bear shapes, fields of color, and attachments such as wheels made of wood and steel. His artistic style is referred to as Pop Art – a label he shunned – he preferred sign painter.

Robert Indiana is most well known for his “LOVE” series – initially a print, created for the Museum of Modern Art’s Christmas card in 1965. This design was the basis for his 1970 Love sculpture and the widely distributed 1973 United States Postal Service “LOVE” stamp. It consists of the letters L and O over the letters V and E in bold Didone type; the O is slanted sideways so that its oblong negative space creates a line leading to the V. The red and green were meant to recall the sign of the Phillips 66 where his father was employed during the artist’s childhood when he was still known as Robert Clark. The blue represented the sky of his home state of Indiana.

Indiana failed to copyright his LOVE design, so opportunistic copycats began springing up left and right, churning out cheap aluminum paperweights and other baubles that would never earn their true designer a dime. Later, he struggled to gain a patent because trademark courts refused to grant a copyright for a single word. Further efforts did little to stop the flood of imitators. 

Mr. Indiana retreated to Vinalhaven, Maine, a remote island, in the late 1970s to escape the New York art scene where he remained reclusive until his death in 2018. 

The Star of Hope on Vinalhaven, Maine had been artist Robert Indiana’s home.

While LOVE will likely always remain the artist’s greatest contribution in the public imagination, his work beyond and apart from this memorable image places Indiana among the great American artists of the second half of the twentieth century. 

As we navigate this turbulent time in our history and look to create a brighter future for this country – let us look to LOVE. From the words of the great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: 

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only LOVE can do that.” 

“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is LOVE.”

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional LOVE will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

Go in LOVE ❤️

OTHER RESOURCES:

Interviews:

Where to find LOVE around the globe:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Love_sculptures

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