The inic "LOVE" art peice by Robert Indiana is world famo, but few know was spired by a gay romance - and there was a "F**K" versn, too
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ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST INIC PIEC OF ART WAS SPIRED BY A GAY ROMANCE
LOVE had untercultural implitns as Ameri tensified s mpaign Vietnam: for many the antiwar movement, love and peace were terchangeable – and s universal votn had particular ronance g om a gay man the years before Stonewall. Robert Indiana, a pneerg Pop artist whose gay inty was often obliquely exprsed his patgs, sculptur, and prts, lived and worked on all five floors of the former dtrial buildg at 2 Sprg Street, on the rner of the Bowery, om 1965 until 1978. Art historian Robert Storr not that to be an openly gay man the 1950s and ’60s was practilly impossible whout donng a seri of guis.
The word patgs, cludg some that e short simple words such as “eat” and “die” and others relatg to earlier Amerin art and lerature (cludg the work of gay artists such as Charl Demuth, Marsn Hartley, Walt Whman, and Hart Crane), n also be terpreted on multiple levels. Referencg the perils of homosexualy an age when sodomy was illegal, ” but also relat to the Mae Wt character, Tira, the 1933 film I’m No Angel (Wt has long been a gay in).
Indiana’s admiratn for his fellow Amerin artists is everywhere apparent this exhibn, which clus patgs as well as many other are homag to the gay pater Marsn Hartley and his love for a German army officer who died the openg weeks of the first world war. Indiana told iends that, as a gay man livg alone on the island, he had not felt particularly wele the years after he moved there.