Robert Indiana

Born Robert Clark in New Castle Indiana, in 1928, Robert Indiana adopted the name of his native state as a pseudonymous surname early in his career. "There have been many American SIGN painters, but there never were any American sign PAINTERS." This exercise in emphasis sums up Robert Indiana's position in the world of contemporary art. He has taken the everyday symbols of roadside America and made them into brilliantly colored geometric Pop Art*.

In his work he has been an ironic commentator on the American scene. Both his graphics and his paintings have made cultural statements on life and, during the rebellious 1960s, pointed political statements as well.

Indiana studied first at the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis* and then at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute in Utica, New York. From there he went to the School of Art Institute of Chicago* where he received a degree in 1953 and won a travelling fellowship to Europe. In 1954, he attended Edinburgh University and Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland.

In his paintings and constructions he has given new meaning to such basic words as "EAT", "DIE" and "LOVE". Using them in bold block letters in vivid colors, he has enticed his viewers to look at the commonplace from a new perspective. One indication of his success was the appearance of his immensely popular multi-colored "LOVE" on a United States postage stamp in 1973.

HIs LOVE series, which opened at the Stable Gallery in New York in 1966, became one of the defining images of the Pop Art era of the 1960s, but for him, the meaning was deeper than just a comment on the commercial aspects of modern life.

He had a difficult childhood because he was adopted by parents whose life was unstable, and his adopted mother, Carmen, died when he was age 20. His preoccupation with LOVE became an exploration of complicated relationships and his spiritual nature. Carmen was of German heritage, and in his LOVE depictions, he used the colors of West Germany, which were yellow letters on a red and black ground.

Robert Indiana was born Robert Clark in 1928 in New Castle, Indiana. Early in his career, the artist changed his last name to Indiana, paying homage to his birth state. Despite a fondness for his home, Indiana has spent most of his life away from the state with which he shares a name. He moved to New York in 1954 and quickly began working in the Pop Art style that was prevalent there at the time.

No artist has been more successful in fulfilling the ideology of Pop Art than Robert Indiana. While other Pop artists reproduced symbols of popular culture, Robert Indiana created an icon with his “Love” artworks. Executed in painting, sculpture and print form, the “Love” image is so ingratiated in American culture that its existence as a work of art is almost forgotten. The stacked, block-lettered format has been used on Christmas cards, stamps, jewelry and coffee mugs. In perhaps the greatest form of adulation, Indiana’s “Love” has been parodied in other pop culture mediums over the forty years since it’s creation. Bands such as Rage Against the Machine and Oasis have used the “Love” format on their album covers. In the 80s, The American Foundation for AIDS Research adopted the “Love” format in a painting designed to increase AIDS awareness.

In 1978, Robert Indiana relocated to Maine. Since moving to New England, Indiana has maintained a special connection to the city of Lewiston. The city has become a destination for art lovers due to the celebrated Lewiston Fine Arts Festival and also because of its most famous former resident, Marsden Hartley. In the early 1990s, Indiana created a series of paintings he called “The Hartley Elegies” that were inspired by and created in homage to American modernist Marsden Hartley. The composition of these works was inspired by Harley’s “German Officer” paintings from 1914-1915.

A kinship between Indiana’s bold works saturated with primary colors and the works of Marsden Hartley is evident. Indiana felt a personal connection to Hartley, as well. Both men have been pivotal figures in American art and Indiana related to the social messages in Hartley’s work that address issues of discrimination.

In 1995, the Weisman Art Museum sponsored an exhibition of both Hartley’s canvases and Indiana’s “Hartley Elegies.” The show traveled from the Weisman Museum in Minnesota to Chicago's Terra Museum of American Art and ended at the Florida International University Art Museum. “Indiana in Lewiston” was the printed work created from the painting “Kv. F VII” from “The Hartley Elegies.” A print from the collection was donated to the Lewiston Public Library where it is currently displayed.