Remembering Robert Indiana, who created more than ‘LOVE’
Robert Indiana created one of the world’s most prolific memes long before the internet. His “LOVE” series, one of the most recognizable images of the 20th century, is a contagion, endlessly replicating across album covers, T-shirts, postal stamps and a Google Doodle.
It is a strange comfort to consider that, like a viral organism, “LOVE” will have a resilient life well beyond its maker. Indiana, born Robert Clark, died Saturday of respiratory failure at his home on a remote island off the coast of Maine, according to news reports. He was 89.
The artist, who attended the School of the Art Institute in Chicago under the G.I. Bill, changed his name in honor of his home state. His death came a day after a federal lawsuit was filed alleging that the artist had become isolated by caretakers and that his work was being exploited for financial gain, according to news reports.
Indiana was a known devotee of solitude and kept his distance from the art world, appearing in public infrequently.
Of course Milwaukee has a soft spot for Indiana because of the floor that “made Milwaukee famous,” one of the most memorable basketball courts in NBA history, second only to Boston Garden’s checkered parquet. And we will get a giant dose of “LOVE” in downtown Milwaukee later this week as we consider the artist’s legacy.
But before we get to all of that, let me say this: What gets lost in the celebration of “LOVE” as a pop culture icon, is its deeper meanings as a Pop Art masterpiece. As pleasing as it may appear, it is a telling reflection of American identity, as capable of pricking the conscience today as it was during its hippie-era beginnings.
After centuries of love in art, of lovers and nymphs locked in countless embraces, Indiana gave us hardedged letters pressed up against each other. After all of those fainting odalisques and madonnas in the history of art, he gave us a gently swooning “O.”
With its “LO” stacked atop the “VE,” Indiana gave us love as a word, as an idea, as an emoji-before-its-time. And he did so in the visually slick language of Madison Avenue.
It arrived on the scene at a time when genocide via the Holocaust, human annihilation via the A-bomb and worldwide economic collapse had become real. That’s when America went shopping — for homes in the suburbs, colorful kitchen appliances and cars. Our postwar salve was our capitalism. Few artworks embody this quite as well as Indiana’s “LOVE.”
On the one hand a cheerful send-up to the most coveted of human emotions, it is also an invitation to consider the consumerist soul of America. What is it that we truly love?
I doubt most people flocking to “LOVE” sculptures in cities around the world for a selfie are pondering the question, but it’s there, lurking and relevant as ever.
What is also lost in any discussion of Indiana’s legacy is almost everything else he did, including tough artworks exploring themes of social justice, which was the subject of “Beyond Love,” a seminal retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2014.
“This retrospective reveals an artist whose work, far from being unabashedly optimistic and affirmative, addresses the most fundamental issues facing humanity — love, death, sin, and forgiveness — giving new meaning to our understanding of the ambiguities of the American Dream and the plight of the individual in a pluralistic society,” is how the Whitney described it.
Milwaukee is the only city I know of that identifies strongly with a work by Indiana that isn’t “LOVE” — the MECCA floor. With a giant M flanking each side of the midcourt line, a red bull’s-eye at center court and “MILWAUKEE” at either end, Robert Indiana’s 1977 basketball floor signaled to TV viewers across the country that they were watching a game in our city.
Steve Marcus, chairman of Marcus Corp., tapped Indiana about 40 years ago for the floor at the Milwaukee Exposition and Convention Center and Arena. It was controversial at the time, mostly because Indiana wasn’t a local pick, and “floor wars” waged in local headlines.
Marcus is also the founder of Sculpture Milwaukee, the annual exhibition of public sculpture, which is bringing “LOVE” to Wisconsin Avenue this year. The artwork is slated to be installed in front of the Northwestern Mutual Tower on Friday (a previous installation was delayed due to rain).
We’ve seen it a million times, but go take another look.