Indiana by way of Maine

Exhibition considers more than Pop pieces

August 21, 2009|Sebastian Smee, Globe Staff

ROCKLAND, Maine - At a certain point, what passes for visual wit can become too cute by half. In the Farnsworth Museum’s fascinating survey of the career of Robert Indiana, a veteran of 1960s Pop art who has lived in Maine since 1978, you arrive at this point repeatedly. And yet something about Indiana’s fizzing way with graphics - not to mention his operatic self-conception - keeps you coming back for more.

Indiana was born Robert Clark in Newcastle, Ind., in 1928. With a disarming mixture of modesty and self-regard, he once referred to himself as “America’s great sign painter.’’ He is most famous for designing the “LOVE’’ emblem - the first two letters standing atop the second two to form a square. What began its life as a commissioned design for a Museum of Modern Art Christmas card is now provocatively described by the Farnsworth as “the most recognizable image in the history of American art’’ (take that, Wyeth, Wood, and Warhol!). Indiana has made the most of it, designing variations in every conceivable format, including translations into different languages and, lately, an adaptation employing the word “HOPE’’ in support of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

But as this exhibition shows, there’s much more to Indiana. He has sustained a long career making images that combine the graphic zing of Pop art with content that is by turns obscurely personal and grandiosely political.

Organized by Princeton-based art historian John Wilmerding, with the assistance of the Farnsworth’s interim director and chief curator, Michael Komanecky, the show celebrates Indiana’s association with Maine, and especially the Star of Hope, the distinctive Vinalhaven home and studio he has lived in for more than a quarter century.

Formerly a lodge belonging to the International Order of Oddfellows, it was first rented out to Indiana as a part-time studio in 1970 by a friend who bought it with him in mind. In 1977, four years after the friend’s death, Indiana bought it for himself.

The Farnsworth show is drawn almost entirely from the artist’s collection, housed at the Star of Hope. It is enhanced by several examples of the large-scale public sculpture for which Indiana is well known, including one rarely seen piece installed on the museum’s roof. The emphasis is on work Indiana has made since his move to Vinalhaven, but it includes intriguing work from early in his career, giving us a beguiling taste of early affinities and roads not taken.