Love and Kisses in Philadelphia: Public Art, Equal Rights, and Identity Politics

This paper offers a revised interpretation of two landmark Philadelphia public sculptures for the 1976 Bicentennial: Claes Oldenburg’s Clothespin (first proposed for Chicago) and Robert Indiana’s LOVE. Both address “love,” appropriate to Philadelphia’s namesake, “City of Brotherly Love”; they also introduce ideas about feminist, gay and civil rights, implying that freedoms the American Revolution promised did not extend to all. Placed near City Hall, both are axially and iconographically linked to the major cultural institution, the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Oldenburg’s acknowledged relationship of Clothespin to Brancusi’s Kiss, a beloved PMA work expressing gender equality, encourages reading Clothespin as two embracing lovers, who, without clear gender identification could be same sex. As to gender parity, Oldenburg had just ended a tumultuous relationship with feminist artist Hannah Wilke, which led to legal disputes over authorship of apparently joint endeavors. Thus Clothespin may reference a symbolic effort to repair their rift; after Clothespin, Oldenburg shared authorship of all realized public monuments with his new partner, Coosje Van Bruggen. While Oldenburg was in Philadelphia installing Clothespin, Wilke was also there performing Through the Large Glass, a striptease behind Duchamp’s famous PMA piece, insinuating discourse between Oldenburg's and her practice. Indiana, who was gay, made LOVE even more sexually open-ended and fluid by not representing a sexual act. Inspirations for LOVE include Indiana’s break-up with artist Ellsworth Kelly. I argue that these two public iconic representations of love relate not only to equal rights and identity politics, but also to personal relationships gone sour.