For Flag Day, it seems appropriate to remember renowned artist Robert
Indiana. Like the American flag, Indiana’s rendering of the word “Love” in
block letters, two over two with that tilted “O” has become an iconic,
ubiquitous symbol on stamps, greeting cards and sculptures, displayed in
more than 50 cities worldwide. Born Robert Clark and raised in
Indianapolis, he moved to New York in 1954, where he changed his
surname as a homage to his roots and his American subject matter. There
with his lover Ellsworth Kelly and other gay artists Agnes Martin, Robert
Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, he blazed a trail that led to the Pop and
Minimalist Art of the Sixties. When New York’s Museum of Modern Art
commissioned him to create a Christmas Card in 1965, Indiana fashioned
“LOVE,” an image inspired by “God is Love” inscriptions from the churches
of his youth, utilizing the colors of Philips 66 gasoline signs of that period.
Indiana retreated from the New York art scene in 1978, choosing the
remote Maine island of Vinalhaven as his refuge for the rest of his life.
Today, his studio and sanctuary in a former Odd Fellows lodge houses the
Star of Hope Foundation that he established before his death to manage
his estate and support arts education and working artists in Maine.
“It is my intention that everybody should have love, and there are
a lot of people in the world.” Robert Indiana
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