Robert Indiana
LOVE, conceived 1966 / fabricated 1999
Polychrome aluminum
96 x 96 x 48 inches (243.8 x 243.8 x 121.9 cm)
Edition 4 of 5, with 2 AP
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: Sang Tae Kim
Robert Indiana’s LOVE (1966/99) is a large-scale outdoor sculpture, measuring 8 x 8 x 4 feet and painted in an eye-catching, brightly saturated red and blue. Its monumental proportions and extraordinary visual impact take the work into the public realm, placing it in context with the scale of billboards and corporate signs—though instead of advertising a company or product, it promotes an emotion and an ideal. Considered to be Indiana’s most iconic artwork, LOVE became synonymous with his art, and a motif that once developed, he never abandoned. Immediately recognizable, LOVE exists as a sign of the Pop artist’s astute understanding of the power of design and contemporary visual culture.
Indiana developed the first incarnation of LOVE in 1964 as a design for a personal holiday greeting that he sent to his friends, and then refined as a printed Christmas card for the Museum of Modern Art the following year. In 1966, the artist debuted major paintings of the motif in what he called his “LOVE show” at the Stable Gallery, New York. Popular since its introduction, LOVE emerged during the social revolutions of the 1960s and became an emblem of the decade’s utopian ideals. The appeal of Indiana’s design was further enhanced by its adoption into a stamp released by the US Postal Service in 1973.
This three-dimensional construction preserves the graphic power of Indiana’s original painted composition, extending the forms of the letters into depth and establishing a presence in real space. This format of LOVE dates to 1967, when Indiana was commissioned by Multiples, Inc. to make his first sculptural version of LOVE as a 12-inch high work in aluminum. In 1970, the artist created his first large-scale LOVE, which is now housed in the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Large-scale LOVE sculptures can be found in public collections around the world, including at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; New Orleans Museum of Art; Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; and The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.