The gay L-O-V-E story behind the iconic image adored around the world

Over the decades, countless straight couples continue to court, dance, even make love to the songs of Hoosier Cole Porter without knowing he was gay. But, perhaps, eclipsing Porter and every other secretly gay artist in seducing the world has been fellow Hoosier Robert Indiana’s totemic L O V E creations.

Straightwashed even unto death, few of the multiple notices of the passing last year of the Army Air Corps veteran acknowledged that his L O V E was for men, a fact readily available to any reporter caring to look – and one that should have already been specifically known by those writing about his death for myriad art sites.

Born Robert Clark in New Castle, Indiana, in 1928, he chose “Robert Indiana” as his “nom de brush” after moving to New York in 1954.

As explained by Bradford R. Collins in Pop Art, the image had two inspirations. One, a 1964 commission by art collector Larry Aldrich who was turning an abandoned Christian Science church into a museum.

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