A few weeks ago, I, an art lover, spent an hour surfing the web, learning about the numerous outdoor sculptures dotting the University Of Pennsylvania campus. Much to my amazement, I discovered that one of the late artist Robert Indiana’s famous LOVE sculptures sits smack dab in the middle of the university’s grounds.
Now, I’d been fully aware of, and had seen multiple times, two other of his LOVE sculptures, both of which reside in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. They have become tourist attractions, especially the one in a park within a stone’s throw of City Hall. That park, in fact, is known to just about everyone as LOVE Park, rather than as John F. Kennedy Plaza, which is its official name.
But it was news to me about the University Of Pennsylvania, a major Philadelphia institution located a mile from downtown. This meant, of course, that Philadelphia displays three LOVE pieces, which is fitting, since The City Of Brotherly Love is one of Philadelphia’s nicknames. New York City, by the way, is the only other municipality in the world with as many as three. (Per Wikipedia, more than 80 LOVE sculptures are scattered around the globe.)
Well, being one who enjoys his mini adventures, I decided I should visit this trio of creations soon. And all on the same day, no less, which I was certain nobody had ever done before. Shit, I’m old as hell and heretofore had no claim to fame whatsoever. It was time to make my mark, no matter how incredibly insignificant it would be!
Thus, late last month I hauled my aged ass aboard a train that, in an hour, took me from my little town to the heart of Philadelphia. Five minutes later, there I was in LOVE Park. Fifteen minutes after that I strode into Sister Cities Park to examine its AMOR sculpture (Robert Indiana produced versions of LOVE in various languages; amor means love in Spanish and Latin). And I made my way to Penn’s sprawling campus from there, eventually locating and admiring its LOVE piece. Mission accomplished!
Why are there so many LOVE sculptures in the world? Why do people gravitate to them? I’m not an expert on anything, let alone love. But it’s pretty clear to me that love, in some respects, makes the world go round. Our planet, which might easily and accurately be viewed as a horror show, would be even more unsettling were it not for the love that connects nearly each person with at least a few of their fellow beings. People need love and want to love. Even if they don’t know it.
And so, Robert Indiana tapped into something elemental when he began inserting love into his artworks. In 1961 he used the word for the first time, in a painting, not a sculpture. He made his initial LOVE sculpture nine years later, and over time the demand for sculptural follow-ups took off. I suspect that the demand was boosted tremendously when, in 1973, the United States Postal Service issued a postage stamp with Indiana’s LOVE image on it. That stamp sold like hotcakes.
I think that the simplicity and the warmth of Indiana’s LOVE design are the reasons for its success. Four letters in basic colors. Nothing more. The letters cling to one another for dear life, the O nestled against the L and the E as if it were in a womb. The LOVE design makes us drop our defenses and think that —yes! — love is where it’s at. It’s all you need, as The Beatles famously noted. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to have water and food too. In any case, one thing for sure is that few artists ever create iconic works. Robert Indiana, without any doubt, did.
1967, the year of the Summer Of Love, was the height of the hippie movement, when it seemed that peace, love and understanding had a chance of putting the human race on a golden path. As we know all too well, that didn’t exactly pan out.
1967 also was the year in which All You Need Is Love, by The Beatles, made its appearance. It would be inappropriate of me to end this contemplation without including their live performance of the song, whose message has resounded loud and clear ever since. The event was part of a broadcast called Our World, the first ever to be transmitted to a worldwide audience via satellite. Home from college during summer break, I, with my brother, watched The Beatles do their magical thing on a tiny television in my bedroom. The presentation mesmerized and excited us. Those were special days.
Click on the following link to view The Beatles in action: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6mtbyq
Yeah, Another Blogger 
Nice, though a figure out two would have enhanced the mere word. Even without, we could do with some of those sculptures in India.
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There’s always room for love.
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I bought a passle of those LOVE stamps and used them for a good while. I’ve seen one of the sculptures; it’s located on the grounds of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in northwest Arkansas. Unlike your trio, the one at Crystal Bridges is made of CorTen Steel and lacking the bright colors, but the message is the same.
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And it’s a good message.
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I LOVE those sculptures. We all could definitely use more of it. ❤️
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You’re not kidding.
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That is one smart cookie to focus on love like that. ‘Cause you’re right. Everybody needs it, whether they think so or not. What’s wrong with “good” feelings? Nothing! Sorry if I’m repeating myself, but someone had graffitied on the back of a stop sign that I passed by, and instead of the usual profanity or gang signs, it just said “You are beautiful,” and made me feel indescribably happy.
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Hi Stacey. Positive messages definitely can make a difference. Maybe that person wrote the same message on multiple stop signs.
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I was there in ’67. I loved the hippy movement, the music, the outfits, the goodwill, optimism and that Beatles’ broadcast. Was there ever a better single year to be alive?
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1967 was the best!
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We have one in Nice which is incredibly popular and they’ve produced a new yellow one as the Tour de France concludes this year, for the first time ever, in Nice on account of the Olympics.
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Hello, Sheree. Paris will be a zoo of sorts with the Olympics going on.
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Thank you, Neil, not only for the brilliant post about art, love and Beatles but also for inspiring the most wonderful comments that make your essay even more unmissable! Including Beatles videos was an excellent thought as it reminded me how great they were, and why they will forever live on. With the daily news all about hate, violence, famine and death, the message that love is stronger than hate, is badly needed. I think it was John who wrote, Love is the answer to everything!
Thank you, Neil, for making our day vibrant, full of hope and yes, Love!
Joanna
PS. I admire your agility to walk for hours without a break!
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Hi Joanna. The Beatles were all about love and peace. And Paul and Ringo still are.
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Yes, I know, Neil, one more important reason to admire them!
Thank you again for your excellent post!
Joanna
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A LOVE-ly post. :)
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Thanks, Tyler.
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You couldn’t have picked a more suitable subject for your blog, Neil! Inspired…Humanity is suffering so much around the world, it really does need a huge helping of love. The more, the better. So thank you for highlighting a much-needed emotion. Cheers! Oh, and love. xx
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I appreciate your comments, Joy. All the best to you and your husband.
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One of the cool things about that Beatles song is that the chorus is a contagious earworm. It’s one that I rather enjoy.
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It’s kind of been stuck in my head for the last week!
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cool
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Love your love post ❤. I never saw Sister Cities Park.
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The park is at the intersection of 18th Street and Ben Franklin Parkway.
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I didn’t know about the one on Penn’s campus. Yes, we all need a little more love! Fun way to spend a day. 🤣😎😎
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Some day I might write about other outdoor sculptures on the Penn campus. There’s a whole lot of them, and many are very cool.
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I wasn’t aware of the many LOVE sculptures in the world. Kudos to you for visiting 3 (or should I say <3, meaning heart) in 1 day. Thanks to you, I learned something new today! ❤️
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Thanks for adding your thoughts. I don’t know who this is, though. You’re listed as Anonymous.
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I LOVE this post Neil. ♥ As far as I know there are no ‘LOVE’ sculptures in Nova Scotia, though there are several instances of “We Love Nova Scotia” depicted in art form.
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Howdy Lynne. Wiki says there are three in Canada, none of them in your province.
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“1967, the year of the Summer Of Love, was the height of the hippie movement, when it seemed that peace, love and understanding had a chance of putting the human race on a golden path…” was also the year my love and I were wed, and that has worked out pretty well.
Thanks for another tour of the City of Love!
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That was an excellent year for the two of you to marry in!
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Great post! How could we not LOVE those sculptures. They defined a wonderful era. Boy has the world gone down hill since then.
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The world is a frigging mess. So much violence and hatred. It’s sickening.
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Thank you for that post. As things are now, we need the power of love to prevail.
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That would be outstanding, but I’m not holding my breath.
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Thanks for taking us along on your fun quest!
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I think we have one of his sculptures in Minneapolis.
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Wiki says it’s in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.
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I’ve seen those, but didn’t know there were so many around the world. Interesting.
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Hi Jacqui. People like LOVE’s message.
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It’s amazing to see how such a simply-styled piece of 1960s pop art from creator Robert Indiana featuring the letters LO over the letters VE, with the O angled sideways, can turn into a famous sculpture which makes people become obsessed with gathering beneath it as it towers over tourists’ and locals’ heads in Philadelphia.
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People very much connect with LOVE sculptures. Their simplicity is, I think, part of their appeal. That is, you don’t have to scratch your head, wondering what the heck they are.
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That’s so true 👍
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What better place for love than the city of brotherly love? Of course, things didn’t exactly turn out the way we’d hoped in 1967 but at least we believed for one brief moment.
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You’re right. We did believe. Still, many good changes in thinking and in culture are the result of the hippie era.
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Thanks for introducing me to this art and for taking me along on your tour!
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My pleasure. I appreciate your stopping by.
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Hmmm: Wonder if we have one in Vancouver. There is a love sculpture a few blocks from where I live. I have a photo of it and if I find it, I’ll forward it to you. All the best, Muriel
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I’m jealous. I wish there was a LOVE sculpture a few blocks from my house.
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Lovely post, Neil 🙂 Enjoyed learning about Robert Indiana’s LOVE sculptures. What a pity that the human race never quite got onto that golden path!
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Yeah, the golden path is nothing but a dream.
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The love sculpture is back in New York City now it’s located at Rockefeller Center. Always loved it.
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I love New York!
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I am a native New Yorker. Now, I’m in VT & FL. Miss the city. I think we had this conversation before
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What a fun mission, to seek the local LOVE sculptures out! I looked for a list of them and was disappointed to see there are none in Colorado. But I know I have seem them in other places. And thanks for the link – I will be singing the song in my head all day, I’m sure.
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It’s a treat to see The Beatles in those young and “innocent” days. That video is fantastic.
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It captures that hippie feel, and there they are so casual in the middle of an orchestra!
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As the song says, “What the world needs now is love….”
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The world needs it desperately.
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A loveable post. Thank you.
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Glad you liked it. Who is this, by the way? Your comments were posted as being from Anonymous.
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Right now the world needs all the love it can get. Thanks for spreading the word and reminding me that I really do need to visit your amazing city one day!
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Philadelphia has a lot going for it. And it has given me a fair number of things to write about!
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I didn’t realize there were so many Love sculptures. Clearly there needs to be even more love spread around. Thanks for sharing these. Maggie
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As we know, love is where it’s at. Hi Maggie. Have a good day!
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good
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I was waiting for the reference to the Beatles! It could hardly be neglected. There is an annual exhibition of sculptures in the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin and we always visit at that time. Most we simply admire but are occasionally taken by one. Two years ago there was a small indoor sculpture, of a size to fit along a mantlepiece, and I simply adored it and would have taken it home but for the €11,000 price ticket on it.
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Evening, Paddy. That’s a whole lot of money for a small sculpture. The artist probably was famous and commanded high prices.
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Agreed but I was really smitten!
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I didn’t know Robert Indiana had done this in Spanish, AMOR also looks great! I wonder if he ever did a NYC version like SICK!, or a Canadian version like “Expressing A Calm & Reasonable Degree of Fondness But Let’s Not Get Carried Away.”
This is a fun post, love it!
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Or where the High Line goes thru the old meatpacking district, instead of LOVE they could have LIVER, that would be romantic, and you could play that Paul McCartney & Wings song from the James Bond movie, “Liver Let Die.”
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I like the way you think!
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I really admire your mini-pilgrimages, Neil. They make life more fun! Meanwhile, I happen to be reading Anne Lamott’s new book Somehow: Thoughts on Love. A short but meaningful read!
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I googled that book a few minutes ago. It sounds like a good one. Zillions of songs have been written about love. Far fewer books, though.
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It makes sense to end with that Beatles song! Thanks for spreading LOVE!
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Howdy. At first I had another ending in mind. But, as the essay progressed, I realized that All You Need Is Love was much more appropriate.
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I’ve wondered why the LOVE sculpture is popular and think you’ve explained it. I know I saw one in NYC and got way too excited for an adult seeing it. It resonates, as do the Beatles even after all these years.
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Hi there, Ally. The Beatles live performance of All You Need Is Love took place very soon after the Sgt. Pepper album was released. 1967 was a great year.
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Love…world needs in abundance even now! So well written!
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The more love, the better. That’s for sure.
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I had forgotten that Love Park is actually John F. Kennedy Plaza. Your essay is perfect, Neil. Love is all you need. – Marty
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Howdy. LOVE Park is a great (unofficial) name. That LOVE sculpture has become a tourist attraction. A sculpture that is a much bigger tourist attraction is the Rocky statue, which sits near the Philadelphia Museum Of Art. The Rocky statue is incredibly popular. It has become a city landmark, right up there with the Liberty Bell.
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What a great post, Neil. I wish there were more of these sculptures around to remind us to slow down and care for one another.
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Hear hear!
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Favorite lines:
“I love these sculptures and have seen photos of various ones before, but never up close and personal. People need love and want to love. Even if they don’t know it.”
“1967, the year of the Summer Of Love, was the height of the hippie movement, when it seemed that peace, love and understanding had a chance of putting the human race on a golden path. As we know all too well, that didn’t exactly pan out.”
To the first of these, I can only respond with an ENTHUSIASTIC YES! To my knowledge, most of the woes of the world come from too little love, never too much (is there such a thing???).
As for the second quote: I was 12 and a MAJOR Beatles fan in the Summer of Love. It would be no exaggeration to say that those years and the civil rights/peace movement shaped my life forever after. We were naive, as everyone is in their early years, but that doesn’t change the fact that we stopped a war and fought for civil rights. When I go to marches today to fight for healthcare, voting rights, abortion rights, more than half of the marchers are from my/our generation.
And so, we live on, and fight on. As you noted so movingly here, LOVE lives on.
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Watching The Beatles perform All You Need Is Love in that studio brings me back to that era. It was a long, long time ago . . . and yet it wasn’t. As it did for you, those years had a powerful impact on me. My ways of thinking and acting are, to a large extent, products of that time.
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To think, I was in Philadelphia for five days last month and didn’t even know about the LOVE park. Had I known, I would have made an effort to see the sculptures.
With the increase in wars this year, I reckon there’s not enough love around the world – tragic!
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Hi there. What were your impressions of Philadelphia?
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I love that sculpture, too. Last year I bought a stuffed cloth replica of it at the Art Museum (it was intended to be a Christmas tree ornament) and hung it in the kitchen, where I can see it every day and smile at its simple but profound message. Likewise, the Beatles song always brings a smile, especially at the end when they cleverly add in a line from their much earlier song on the same theme: “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah…” I will never get over their fabness!
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Hi Cindy. The Beatles were at the top of the mountain back then. And I guess their gradual breakup somehow was symbolic of society’s woes.
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I’ve seen each of these, and I was surprised to learn there’s another (blue one) on Wichita State’s campus…or at least there used to be.
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There’s no way to know, I suppose. But I’d be curious to know which LOVE sculpture draws the most visitors. Maybe one of them in NYC or in Paris. Or maybe it’s the one in LOVE Park in Philly.
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Great post. I’m going to have to search out NY’s Love statues!
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Hi. Thanks for dropping by. I don’t know who this is, though. Your reply was posted as being from Anonymous.
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Love this post!
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Hi, and thanks very much.
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I enjoyed this post! The only LOVE sculpture location I was familiar with was Love Park. I hope the designer/sculptor was well compensated. The design was also the logo for Love Cosmetics … originally a subsidiary of a Philadelphia pharmaceutical company my Dad worked for.
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“I hope the designer/sculptor was well compensated.” — I’ve wondered about that too. He probably was paid decently, but not extraordinarily.
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Maybe we need reminding every now and then!
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Hi. I completely agree.
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I had no idea Philadelphia’s home to so many LOVE sculptures, that’s very cool!
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The most-visited one in the city is the one in LOVE Park. It really draws crowds.
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Such iconic art works. No matter where we live, or what our circumstances, all of us need love. It looks like you had a great road trip (or rail). Thanks for taking us along!
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Philadelphia is a fascinating city. There is so much of interest there.
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