Love is Love

I hope everyone is feeling some love today. The covid pandemic has made many of us realise just how much people mean to us – families, partners, friends. Even though today’s St. Valentine’s Day is, as I’ve said before, is the wrong saint on the wrong day I think we need it anyway. There’s no better way to spread the love around than to look at one of the most famous images of love that has inspired many copies. It’s the image contained in the US postage stamp shown above – “Love” by gay artist Robert Indiana (1928-2018).

Despite using the word “love” this work has generated regret, dispute and anger. Let’s start at the beginning.

This iconic work began with two people in love. In the 1950s Robert Indiana met Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015), an abstract artist who was a member of the Ghost Army that I wrote about last November. The two artists fell in love. Ellsworth became a sort of mentor to Robert, and Ellsworth’s Minimalist style was a great influence on Robert and the creation of “Love”.

The romantic relationship began to break down at the start of the 1960s, mainly over disagreements over Robert’s use of lettering in his work which Ellsworth said had no place in art. Of the two it was Robert who felt the separation the most.

In 1964 Robert came up with a work which was a direct ancestor of his famous “Love”. In that year he met the fashion designer Larry Aldrich at one of Andy Warhol’s parties. Robert had heard that Larry was going to display his private art collection in public. The display was to be housed in an old grocery store in Ridgefield, Connecticut, which had more recently been used as a Christian Science church. The church had moved out and the building was now vacant. Robert indiana, who had ben raised as a Christian Scientist, suggested to Larry that he include a new work by Robert inspired by his church experience. Christian Science churches are generally quite plain and Robert remembered one church just had the motto “God is love” painted on a wall. Robert’s new work for Larry reversed the motto to read “Love is God”, the words placed in a circle at the centre of a square that was standing on one corner.

During 1965 the Museum of Modern Art in New York approached Robert to design a Christmas card for them. What he produced was the iconic image of “Love” which has become the most popular card the museum ever produced. Robert produced several different colour variations for the Museum and the familiar red letters with blue and green background is the one they chose. Robert then went on to produce series of paintings and other works using his colour variations for an exhibition at the Stable Gallery in New York.

In 1969 Robert created the first sculpture of “Love”. This was in metal and was a direct copy of the red lettering in the Museum of Modern Art’s Christmas card. The sculpture was displayed at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Since then several more sculptures have been made and are situated in various cities (and in various translations of the word “love”) all around the world. Wikipedia has a list of them here. Perhaps there’s one near you and you didn’t know.

In 1973 “Love” was used as the basis for a postage stamp by the US Postal Service, the stamp that is shown above.

Although “Love” has become an iconic work Robert Indiana expressed some regret at having created it. In 2014 he was interviewed by National Public Radio in the USA in which he said: “It was a marvellous idea, but it was also a terrible mistake. It became too popular.” In fact, it became so popular that it is said to have become the most appropriated and plagiarised work of American art. This is because of the uncertain copyright laws that were in place at the time “Love” was created.

More strict copyright laws came into force in the USA in 1978 which would have given Robert Indiana full ownership rights to “Love” had they been in force in 1964. And copyright law and ownership disputes over Robert Indiana’s work is an issue which is still effecting “Love” to this day.

For several years the Morgan Art Foundation and America Image Art have been battling to secure or remove all copyright on “Love” and Robert’s other works. The Morgan Art Foundation registered “Love” as one of their copyright trademarks, claiming that Robert Indiana made an agreement with them giving them the copyright and exclusive reproduction rights to all of his work made between 1960 and 2004. America Image Art, on the other hand, claim that Robert stated several times publicly that he didn’t want his art to be copyrighted, and that “Love”, as well as work produced with them was in the public domain and always had been. The legal battle between them is ongoing.

But let’s end with an argument. You remember I said earlier that Robert Indiana produced colour variations of “Love”? Well, one of these variations was a 12-piece screen-printed version made in a limited edition in 1966 called “The Book of Love”. The colour variations include yellow lettering and a black and white version. Each “Love” is accompanied by a poem. In December last year one copy of “The Book of Love” series went up for auction at Bonham’s in London. It sold for £92,750.

Of course, no-one can put a price on real love, and I hope you all receive some priceless love today.