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since he and his former lover staged their breakups nightly for all of the town to hear. Indiana also seems to have left himself wide open to accusations from each and every unemployed young male islander he ever paid for services rendered. In fact, his vulnerability, his relative wealth, and his artistic renown may explain why he and he alone is facing these three misdemeanors. In a reversal of the standard police practice of dragging prostitutes through the courts and giving their clients a gentlemanly slap on the wrist, the Rockland police have no intention of charging the young men with prostitution. To do so, says Knox County district attorney William Anderson, "would only make the case against Mr. Indiana harder to prosecute." Of course, the local papers-the Portland Press Herald and the Maine Times-and even the New York Post ran with the story. Despite sad reality of Indiana's victimization, who cannot savor the irony of the charges against him? Ever since the nation entered the age of AIDS, America's moralist minority has been on a witch-hunt, and the name of Robert Indiana-whether he likes it or not-is closely identified with the free-love movement. His being charged with paying for sex suggests that free love has become very expensive indeed. 

As Indiana awaits trial, he is visiting New York more frequently than at any time since he left the city thirteen years ago. But in New York, too, Indiana can see how his ideal of love has deteriorated. Over the past few years, a three-man artists' collective from Canada called general idea has produced an image based on Love that substitutes "AIDS" for "LOVE." As Love did, General Idea's revision speaks volumes about the world we live in, and whatever the group could get their hands on-magazines, wallpaper, scarves, the windows of the New Museum in New York, the sides of trams in Seattle and Amsterdam, a billboard in San Francisco, stickers, and dozens of paintings exhibited around the world--has been plastered with their tragic distortion of the face of Love. 
In nineties neo-activist art-speak, General Idea's AA Bronson explains his group's motives: "We wanted to make AIDS as a household word, something that anyone could get. And by spreading the image the way the Love logo was spread, we think we can deprive the disease of its exotic quality and depoliticize it. If you can get AIDS to look completely normal, you can get normal medical gears into operation that can deal with an epidemic."
Surprisingly, Indiana concurs, with a qualification. "It's what I would have done myself," he says, "because the association of love with AIDS is inevitable, one of the ironic twists of coincidence. But I wouldn't have made it as grotesque as theirs--their D is grotesque."
[[imagine"]]
Indiana's Victorian Mansion in Vinalhaven.
Cigar in hands, his head wrapped in a scarf, the Robert Indiana of the 1990s is a strange mixture of country and city. He manages to be simultaneously well-mannered and awkward, pompous and candid, intellectual and superstitious, bone-dry and sopping wet. "Indiana was always more intelligent than most artists," recalls the critic Davis Bourdon, "but I can't remember a time, even in the early sixties, when anyone was crazy about his personality. He appeared cool and standoffish, a cold fish." Indeed, part of Indiana's current isolation may be attributed to his arrogance. According to art-world personality Henry Geldzahler, Indiana is the only person who won't shake his hand.
If Indiana suffers from an image problem, it may have arisen from his lifelong history as an outsider, or it may be the afterglow of his former glory. Even his all-American stage name, Indiana, has a dated, hippie-ish ring to it. Fortunately, however, things have a way of reversing themselves, and Robert Indiana is beginning to receive the recognition due one of the key artists of the pop era. Paintings and prints from his latest series, using the work of Marsden Hartley (who died in 1943 and was Maine's greatest modernist painter) as a focus, are being bought by museums around the country. Last year, Abrams published a 2320page monograph on Indiana. In December, there were three simultaneous exhibitions in New York--at the Marisa del Re and the Ruth Siegal galleries on Fifty-seventh Street and at the Vinalhaven Press Gallery in SoHo. And in May, he held a spring retrospective at Susan Sheehan Gallery in New York City, which was accompanied by a glossy catalogue raisonne of his prints from 1951 to the present and two versions of a new color etching, Love 1991.
[[imagine on the right]]
Indiana's works are also making an appearance on the resale market, where they are fetching respectable prices. Two years ago, a Love painting went for almost $145,000 at auction in France, and now, one Indiana Square (commissioned in 1970 by the Indiana National Bank in Indianapolis for $10,000) is on the market for a mid-six-figure amount. Indiana is optimistic about his chances or a comeback despite the crash in the art market and the blip in his personal fortunes. He is also advisedly modest. "I'm not a million-dollar auction figure--let's put it that way," he says.

BEFORE HE ASSUMED THE MONIKER OF HIS HOME STATE IN the 1950s and set about becoming a successful artist, Robert Clark was a rootless Depression-era only child born to Christian Scientist parents. At church, he says, he used to contemplate the God Is Love sign that hung on the pulpit. 

IN MANY WAYS, INDIANA'S WORKS PROVIDED 

Transcription Notes:
[[imagine: Indiana's Victorian mansion in Vinalhaven.]] [[imagine: a red sofa]]