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by Floyd Egner
Publisher, Tropical Breeze
Robert Indiana's name may not be as
familiar in most American households as those of his pop art
contemporaries Andy Warhol and Peter Max, but his images are.
Indiana, who adopted the name of his
native state as his last name, makes words a part of his visual and
sculptural art. He created "Love," which has become a cultural
icon, expressed in hundreds of ways, perhaps most famously as a
1973 U.S. postage stamp. More than 320 million of the 8¢
stamps were printed and distributed.
The stylized word with the tilted "O" was
first created for a Christmas card in 1965 for New York's Museum
of Modern Art. Indiana has recreated it hundreds of times since in
print and as sculpture. Metal, stone and concrete renditions of the
image are featured at universities, art museums and city parks
throughout the U.S., including prominent locations such as in
Philadelphia's John F. Kennedy Plaza in front of the Philadelphia
Museum of Art, dedicated in 1976 as part of Bicentennial
celebrations.
The "sculptural poem," as Indiana calls
it, has even been reproduced internationally in Taipei, Tokyo,
Singapore and Jerusalem and translated into various languages.
In the early 1990s Indiana was the only
American artist to participate in an art project using pieces of
the Berlin Wall as a medium. Of course, he painted "Love."
The Berlin Wall piece, which is now owned
by Tampa Bay's Outdoor Arts Foundation, is signed and
authenticated. Its value perhaps could be called priceless, but
certainly is substantial. Authenticated posters by Indiana sell for
thousands of dollars. The Swiss-based international pubication, The
Art Newspaper, reported in June that a 1999 aluminum sculpture of
"Love" by Indiana sold at auction this year for $650,000. A year
earlier, the paper noted, a similar sculpture by Indiana sold for
$388,000.
The authenticity is a critical issue,
because Indiana failed to register a copyright on his original work
and it frequently has been used for unauthorized commercial
purposes. It has become an iconic image of the 1960s, reproduced in
virtually every art medium, including jewelry. It has been part of
album covers, parodied by other artists and inspired both the cover
art for the novel "Love Story" and the design of the logo for Steve
Job's "NeXT" computer company.
Born Robert Clark in 1928, the artist took
his state's name as his own after moving to New York in 1954. In a
2004 article for the Museum of Modern Art, author Judith Hecker
said the artist was fascinated "with Americana, signage and the
power of ordinary words." He studied printmaking techniques at the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but is best known for his
screenprinting, producing numbers and short words such as "love,"
"eat" and "hug" in bold, simple images. He often has referred to
himself as a "sign painter" and says that his paintings are
signs.
Indiana has lived and worked in the island
town of Vinal Haven, Maine since 1978.
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