LOVE is artist Robert Indiana’s best-known work and one of the twentieth-century’s most iconic works of art. Beginning in the mid-1960s, the artist reimagined this distinctive stacked square in media ranging from paintings to postage stamps, and the motif has been subject to innumerable unlicensed appropriations. Especially early in his career, Indiana thought of himself primarily as a poet and a painter, and words are a key component in nearly all his work. However, “love,” according to the artist, “has been my greatest preoccupation.”

Label from Robert Indiana: A Sculpture Retrospective, June 16–September 23, 2018