Everyone knows Robert Indiana’s most famous work – Love. Just that one word, spelled out in two tiers of red letters, against blue and green, the work is nonetheless more than just this syllable. The lovely round O – touched by the L, carried by the bracing E – swoons and leans, as if it has been knocked sideways by the force of love. It takes on a bodily form.
Indiana (1928-2018) created this pure and concentrated pictogram in his late thirties. Originally commissioned as a Christmas card for MoMA, it became an oil painting and then many more paintings, a sculpture then many more sculptures. And so the proliferation continues. What was first an emblem for hippies, Love became a symbol for Americans protesting against race riots, Vietnam and civil injustice. You might say the noun turned into a verb. But by 1973, the original icon – which made Indiana little money, because he never took out a copyright – had become so popular the US mail turned it into a cute little stamp. And now it has devolved back into a parody of what it once was: an infinitely recognisable greetings card.
