A brief explanation
Fair question, honestly.
The thing is
It started with New York. You walk past it on Sixth Avenue, take the obligatory photo, move on — it's famous, it's everywhere, it doesn't really count.
Then it turned up in Forte dei Marmi. We weren't looking for it. Same four letters, same tilted O, just sitting there in the middle of Tuscany.
Then San Francisco, where Alex spent a chunk of his career. SFMOMA. Again.
At some point you stop calling it a coincidence. When it came to designing the invitations, there was really only one answer.
New York City
Sixth Avenue & 55th Street. 12 feet of red, blue and green aluminium just sitting on a street corner. Installed 1976. Apparently one of the most photographed artworks on earth, which tracks.
Forte dei Marmi
Versilia, Tuscany. Indiana spent over thirteen years working with sculptors in nearby Pietrasanta — marble-carving capital of the world — making LOVE in Carrara marble. Of course he did.
San Francisco
Alex lived and worked here for years. SFMOMA had it. He walked past it regularly without thinking much about it. In retrospect, clearly significant.
Everywhere, it turns out
50+ versions exist worldwide. Philadelphia, Singapore, Taipei, Tokyo, Stockholm. Indiana made it in Hebrew, Italian, Chinese, Spanish. The man was thorough.
The man behind it
Born Robert Clark in 1928. He renamed himself after his home state, which is either very cool or very American, probably both. He was part of the Pop Art scene with Warhol and Lichtenstein, though he always seemed slightly apart from it.
The LOVE image started as a Christmas card for MoMA in 1964. The only thing he remembered decorating his childhood church was the phrase "God is Love". That became a card, then a print, then a sculpture, then 50 sculptures, then somehow the whole thing.
He was always clear it wasn't just a romantic gesture. Erotic, political, spiritual, personal — all of it at once. Which is more interesting than it looks.
He spent the last 30 years of his life alone on an island off the coast of Maine. Died there in 2018, aged 89. robertindiana.com →
People asked Indiana about the tilted O a lot. He said love isn't stable — it leans, it's off-balance, it's moving. So the O leans too. It's a small thing that makes the whole word feel less like a statement and more like something actually happening.