"In a sense, I got down to the subject matter of my work... the subject is defined by its expression in the word itself... LOVE is purely a skeleton of all that word has meant in all the erotic and religious aspects of the theme, and to bring it down to the actual structure of the calligraphy [is to reduce it] to the bare bones" (Indiana quoted in T. Brakeley (ed.), Robert Indiana, New York 1990, p. 166).