His Art, Their Ideas: Did Robert Indiana Lose Control of His Work?

Robert Indiana is a product invented by a greedy art market, a con game; his work never reached a level to be a serious work of art.

Nice article

People take advantage of older folks, and artists are no exception.

Michelangelo, he ain't.

Thank you, New York Times, for keeping this on your radar.

Can't help but think about General Idea's work, AIDS; and Gran Fury's work RIOT within this conversation.

The NYT published an article last September about this controversy, and a pair of photos included in the article seem to show the BRAT design being inserted into a photo of Indiana after the fact. Apparently the photo that included the BRAT image was edited using an image from the previous year. If true, that would be strong evidence that someone was faking the new designs. Here's the images: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/09/22/arts/22INDIANA2/18INDIANA-COMBO-jumbo.jpg

It’s hard to imagine Indiana’s vision devolving from LOVE to BRAT (or worse, LUV). I’ve followed this sordid tale from the time of his death and believe that few of the participants really care about the artist’s legacy or his wishes.

At a certain level—mostly a high financial level—art is a hustle. Indiana was a hustler, as is his enabler. So what? Like the villager, being questioned by the anthropologist as to his conception of his cosmology and the various animals on which the earth rested, tiger, water buffalo, etc., who finally tried to end the nosy queries with the exasperated observation that “it’s just turtles all the way down,”—so an artist looks at the Indiana affair and exasperatingly says “what’s it got to do with art?” It’s just money all the way down.

Gosh! What profound art!

One should not lose sight of what is at stake here. The artist had works licensed under his name, a move btw which seems in keeping with his desire to delegate the merchandizing to others. The lawsuit as explained in the article is between two entities which both had a contract with the artist : an art publisher on the one hand, and a company licensed for one product (LOVE) on the other hand - who are fighting over the marketing of competing products. So the contracts with the artist are the only thing that matters. Did the former have the right to market other four-letter sculptures under the artist's name? Did the contract with the latter preclude the marketing of other four-letter sculptures by a third party in the future ? Now regarding the kind of control the agreement between the art publisher and the artist stipulated and if it was overstepped, this is a completely different story, that should be solved between the art publisher and the artist's estate. These four-letter sculptures have become a brand associated with Mr Indiana, so bemoaning the (never-existent) pseudo-romantic times when art was art because sculptors were carving by hand and starving won't help.

I appreciated the concept and execution of "Love". But after a while, it's a bit like Andy Warhol. How many versions of Marilyn Monroe are there, except to market?

As s artist I do some graphic work and appreciate that the basic concept has interesting potential. Currently the political and economic situations seems quite ripe with rather forceful four letter words with a bit more poetic punch than Indiana's efforts.

Nice job of reporting. Sometimes I feel I am too quick to critize what I read here.

I did not know much about this artist. Though I have seen the original of his LOVE. To me, woe be to these folks who bought all these - almost assembly like - productions based on the orifginal LOVE. These assembly line works - in my opinion - are hardly art. And now it turns out, Mr Indiana did not even know - I would sue his estate and drmolish thus art work as a fake.