Indiana, Robert

Robert Indiana (born Robert Clark in New Castle, Indiana on September 13, 1928) is an American artist associated with the Pop Art movement.

Indiana moved to New York City in 1954 and joined the pop art movement, using distinctive imagery drawing on commercial art approaches blended with existentialism, that gradually moved toward what Indiana calls "sculptural poems". Indiana's work often consists of bold, simple, iconic images, especially numbers and short words like "EAT", "HUG", and "LOVE". He is also known for painting the unique basketball court formerly used by the Milwaukee Bucks in that city's U.S. Cellular Arena, with a large M shape taking up each half of the court. His sculpture in the lobby of Taipei 101, called 1-0 (2002, aluminum), uses multicoloured numbers to suggest the conduct of world trade and the patterns of human life.
Indiana has been a theatrical set and costume designer, such as the 1976 production by the Santa Fe Opera of Virgil Thomson's The Mother of Us All, based on the life of suffragist Susan B. Anthony. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Indiana produced a series of Peace Paintings, which were exhibited in New York in 2004.
Indiana has lived as a resident in the island town of Vinalhaven, Maine since 1978. He appeared in Andy Warhol's film Eat (1964), which is a single 45-minute shot of Indiana eating a mushroom.
LOVE
Indiana's best known image is the word love in upper-case letters, arranged in a square with a tilted letter O. This image, first created for a Christmas card for the Museum of Modern Art in 1964, was included on an eight-cent United States Postal Service postage stamp in 1973, the first of their regular series of "love stamps."
Sculpture versions of the image have been installed at these American locations:
Sixth Avenue in New York City
E W Fairchild-Martindale Library, Lehigh University Asa Packer Campus
Pratt Institute campus in Brooklyn, New York
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana
Scottsdale's Civic Center
"LOVE Park" in Philadelphia
New Orleans Museum of Art's sculpture garden
Middlebury College campus [1]
University of Pennsylvania campus, Philadelphia
Museum of Art at Brigham Young University
Ursinus College campus in Collegeville, Pennsylvania
Pool area of the Red Rock Resort Spa and Casino in Las Vegas
Outside the United States sculptural versions of Indiana's image have been installed at these locations:
Taipei 101 in Taipei, Taiwan (also displays Indiana's 1-0)[2]
Office district of West Shinjuku in Tokyo, Japan
Orchard Road in Singapore
Plaza del Sagrado Corazón in Bilbao, Basque Country Spain
Outside 1445 West Georgia Street in Vancouver, Canada
An Indiana sculpture showing the Hebrew word for love (ahava) is displayed at The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Israel.

]Copyright status
Infamously, Indiana failed to register the copyright for his catchy image and found it difficult to deter unauthorized use. The image has been reproduced and parodied countless times in sculptures, posters, and 3-D desk ornaments. It has been rendered in Hebrew, Chinese, and Spanish. It strongly influenced the original book cover for Erich Segal's novel Love Story. A parody appeared on a Rage Against the Machine album cover, Renegades, as well as the cover for Oasis' single 'Little by Little' from the 2002 album Heathen Chemistry. London artist D*Face recently parodied the image by rendering the word hate with the A tilted. Belgian artist Eddy Gabriel made a version using the word lost.

Skateboard culture
The LOVE emblem has been adopted by skateboarders and frequently appears in skateboard magazines and videos. After skateboarding was banned in Philadelphia's LOVE Park, the emblem was used by organizations opposing the ban.