1970's -- Robert Indiana, LOVE, Red Blue

Pop Art: A style of modern art popularized in the 1960s which celebrates popular culture, consumerism and mass culture (i.e. comic strips, pin-ups and packaging), with a mixture of irony and celebration. Pop artists include Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and 1999 -- Claes Oldenburg, Safety Pin.

The Artist:

Robert Indiana

Artist and description:

Robert Indiana (American), LOVE, Red Blue, aluminum polyurethane enamel

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

Music:

The cover for the Oasis' single Little by Little was influenced by "LOVE"

Cleaning the Love sculpture after the Hurricane Katrina flood.

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

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.

Indiana's best known image is the word "LOVE" in a square with a tilted "O". This image, first created for a Christmas card for the Museum of Modern Art in 1964, was included on an 8 cent United States Postal Service postage stamp in 1973, the first of their regular series of "love stamps." Sculpture versions are on display at: Sixth Avenue in New York City; the Pratt Institute campus in Brooklyn, NY; the Indianapolis Museum of Art; Scottsdale's Civic Center, in so called "LOVE Park" in Philadelphia, the New Orleans Museum of Art's sculpture garden and on the University of Pennsylvania campus.

What was going on the world during the decade this sculpture was completed?

1971 China joins the United Nations.

1972 J. Utzon completes the construction of the Sydney Opera House

1974-79 Judy Chicago creates The Dinner Party, the first large scale collaborative feminist work of art.

1974 Richard Nixon resigns from presidency; Gerald Ford becomes 38th President

1975 - 80 Piazza d’Italia constructed in New Orleans, heralding postmodernism.

1977 Apple II, the first personal computer, goes on sale

1979 Margaret Thatcher becomes first female British Prime Minister

1979 Mother Teresa awarded Nobel Peace Prize

1980 John Lennon shot and killed in NYC

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Much information on this site courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art.

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

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