Looking for love? This month you can find it at New York’s Paul Kasmin Gallery, which is showing the hard-edge metal sculptures that Indiana began making in the 1960s, including the iconic Love. Many believe that the artist got rich off the countless reproductions of this classic composition. Not so. The image, which started off as a Christmas card in 1965, was never copyrighted. Next year, the Farnsworth Museum, in Rockland, Maine, near Indiana’s home on Vinalhaven island, will hold a retrospective of work by the artist, who turns 80 this month. Indiana spoke with Sarah Douglas about literature, why he doesn’t paint in the buff and his continuing efforts to spread Love around the world.

Has Love overshadowed the rest of your career?

I’m afraid so. There’s no question that for most people Robert Indiana is Love.

How do you feel about all the artists who have appropriated it?

What am I to do? I think it pertains to that old saying about flattery and imitation. I won’t be too offended.

How do you see yourself in relation to other artists who use text, like Lawrence Weiner?

I’d rather think about Ed Ruscha. I’m very fond of his work, and I feel comfortable that we are both word painters.

What artist had the most influence on you?

Ellsworth Kelly, and it was quite a burden. I had to get out from under that influence, so I started adding words to my canvases. Mr. Kelly didn’t care for that and practically never spoke to me afterward. He’s a purist.

You and Kelly lived on Coenties Slip in Lower Manhattan in the 1960s. There you could be found discussing Gertrude Stein with Agnes Martin—a heady atmosphere.

It was a fascinating atmosphere because Agnes was our in situ guru, and it was already quite obvious that Kelly would achieve masterdom. It was a neat number of people within three blocks of one another.

You started out as a poet, and you’ve incorporated literature into your work. Which three books would you want to have on a desert island?

There’s no question that one would be Leaves of Grass. Another is Moby-Dick. The third might be The Bridge by Hart Crane.

Did your 1955 poem “When the Word Is Love” presage the Love painting?

I have it hanging here on the wall—I am talking to you from a room where I am surrounded by my own love poetry. In it I speak of the actual configuration of the four letters and what else they might symbolize.

Didn’t you make a series of “Peace” paintings in 2003?

That’s right. In reaction to what’s going on in Iraq. It looks like that’s never going to end. But I’m not sure that we’ve spilled more blood than any other country. It seems to be the nature of countries to spill blood, unfortunately.

You’ve also made other political paintings.

It all started with my “Confederacy” paintings, my reaction to what was happening in the South in the ‘60s. Then I watched the World Trade Center collapse. I came home and did an Afghanistan painting. I was very hawkish, and unfortunately, with President Bush I became nonhawkish.

Is it true that in the 1950s when you had a studio on Fourth Avenue in Manhattan, you could see Willem de Kooning painting in the nude?

Yes. It was before air-conditioning, and the back window of my loft looked out into de Kooning’s studio, and there he was painting in the nude. That was great fun. I never paint in the nude.

But couldn’t you? I wouldn’t think there would be anyone looking in your windows.

I’m afraid that’s not the case. I had an elderly lady stop me on the street and say, “Mr. Indiana, will you please close your shades?” She had, with her telescope, been observing me undressing for bed.

What are you working on now? I did a series of “Love” paintings in Chinese. I thrive on coincidences, and it just so happens that the Chinese word for love is pronounced like “I,” one of my initials. There is also a Hindu Love. My thought is that Love should blanket the world, and if it can be in the native language, all the better.

Are the non-English Loves as successful graphically?

Definitely not. I was commissioned to do a sculpture for the world’s tallest building, in Taipei. They were very enthusiastic about L-O-V-E, but they didn’t want a Chinese Love. I am stuck with that problem.

"Conversation with Robert Indiana" originally appeared in the September 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's September 2008 Table of Contents.