Claes Oldenburg is a
SwedishSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
sculptorSculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
, best known for his
public artThe term public art properly refers to works of art in any media that have been planned and executed with the specific intention of being sited or staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all...
installations typically featuring very large replicas of everyday objects. Another theme in his work is soft sculpture versions of everyday objects.
The most memorable aspects of Oldenburg's works are perhaps, the colossal sculptures that he has made in partnership with his late wife,
Coosje van BruggenCoosje van Bruggen was a sculptor, art historian, and critic. She collaborated extensively with her husband, Claes Oldenburg.-Biography:...
.
Biography
Claes Oldenburg was born January 28th, 1929 in
StockholmStockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
,
SwedenSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, he was the son of a Swedish diplomat stationed in New York. In 1936 his father was transferred to
ChicagoChicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
where Oldenburg grew up, attending the Latin School of Chicago. He studied at
Yale UniversityYale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
from 1946 to 1950, then returned to Chicago where he took classes at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
While further developing his craft, he worked as a reporter at the
City News Bureau of ChicagoCity News Bureau of Chicago, or City Press, was a news bureau that served as one of the first cooperative news agencies in the United States. It was founded in the late 19th century by the newspapers of Chicago to provide a common source of local and breaking news and also used by them as a...
. He also opened his own studio and, in 1953, became a naturalized citizen of the United States. His first recorded sales of artworks were at the
57th Street Art FairThe 57th Street Art Fair is Chicago's oldest juried art fair. Founded in 1948, it is held the first weekend in June every year on 57th Street between Kimbark and Kenwood Avenues, in the Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park, directly north of the University of Chicago campus...
in Chicago, where he sold 5 items for a total price of $25. He moved back to
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1956. There he met a number of artists, including
Jim DineJim Dine is an American pop artist. He is sometimes considered to be a part of the Neo-Dada movement. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, attended Walnut Hills High School, the University of Cincinnati, and received a BFA from Ohio University in 1957. He first earned respect in the art world with...
,
Red GroomsRed Grooms is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life...
, and
Allan KaprowAllan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings - some 200 of them - evolved over the years...
, whose
HappeningA happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered art, usually as performance art. Happenings take place anywhere , are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience...
s incorporated theatrical aspects and provided an alternative to the
abstract expressionismAbstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
that had come to dominate much of the art scene. During this time, artist
Robert BeauchampRobert Beauchamp was an American figurative painter and arts educator. Beauchamp's paintings and drawings are known for depicting dramatic creatures and figures with expressionistic colors. His work was described in the New York Times as being "both frightening and amusing,"...
described Oldenburg as "brilliant," due to the reaction that the pop artist brought to a "dull" abstract expressionist period.
Sculptures, though quite large, often have interactive capabilities. One such interactive early sculpture was a soft sculpture of a tube of lipstick which would deflate unless a participant re-pumped air into it. In 1974, this sculpture,
Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar TracksLipstick on Catepillar Tracks is a weathering steel sculpture, by Claes Oldenburg.It is located at Morse College Courtyard, Yale University....
, was redesigned in a sturdier aluminum form, the giant lipstick being placed vertically atop tank treads. Originally installed in Beinecke Plaza at Yale, it now resides in the
Morse CollegeMorse College is one of the twelve residential colleges at Yale University, built in 1961 and designed by Eero Saarinen. It is adjacent to Ezra Stiles College. The current Master is Frank Keil, Professor of Psychology and Professor of Linguistics. The Associate Master is Kristi Lockhart...
courtyard.
Many of Oldenburg's large-scale sculptures of mundane objects elicited public ridicule before being embraced as whimsical, insightful, and fun additions to public outdoor art. In the 1960s he became associated with the
Pop ArtPop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
movement and created many so-called
happeningA happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered art, usually as performance art. Happenings take place anywhere , are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience...
s, which were
performance artIn art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
related productions of that time. The name he gave to his own productions was "Ray Gun Theater".
His first wife (1960–1970) Pat Muschinski, who sewed many of his early soft sculptures, was a constant performer in his happenings. This brash, often humorous, approach to art was at great odds with the prevailing sensibility that, by its nature, art dealt with "profound" expressions or ideas. But Oldenburg's spirited art found first a niche then a great popularity that endures to this day.
Between 1969 and 1977, Oldenburg was in a relationship with the feminist artist and sculptor,
Hannah WilkeHannah Wilke was an American painter, sculptor, photographer, video artist and performance artist.-Biography:...
, who died in 1993. They shared several studios and traveled together, and Wilke often photographed him.
Oldenburg's collaboration with Dutch/American writer and art historian
Coosje van BruggenCoosje van Bruggen was a sculptor, art historian, and critic. She collaborated extensively with her husband, Claes Oldenburg.-Biography:...
dates from 1976. They were married in 1977. In 1988, he and van Bruggen created the iconic
Spoonbridge and Cherry sculpture for the
Walker Art CenterThe Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
in
Minneapolis, MinnesotaMinneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...
that remains a staple of the
Minneapolis Sculpture GardenThe Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is an 11 acre park in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the United States.It is located near the Walker Art Center, which operates it in coordination with the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board...
as well as a classic image of the city.
Typewriter Eraser, Scale XTypewriter Eraser, Scale X is a sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.Constructed in 1999, it is located at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden....
(1999) is in the
National Gallery of Art Sculpture GardenThe National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden is the most recent addition to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Completed and opened to the public on May 23, 1999, the location provides an outdoor setting for exhibiting a number of pieces from the Museum's contemporary sculpture...
.
In addition to freestanding projects, they occasionally contribute to architectural projects, most notably the former Chiat/Day advertising agency headquarters designed by Frank O. Gehry in the Venice district of
Los Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
—the main entrance is a pair of giant binoculars. The advertising agency
DDBDDB Worldwide Communications Group Inc., known internationally as DDB, is a worldwide marketing communications network. It is owned by Omnicom Group Inc, one of the world's largest advertising holding companies...
is the current tenant.
Another well known construction is the
Free StampWillard Park is a public park adjacent to city hall in the Downtown Cleveland, Ohio. The park, which is situated at the corners of East 9th Street and Lakeside Avenue on the historic Mall C, is the location of the public sculpture Free Stamp, and was the home of the original Cleveland Fire Fighters...
in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. This Free Stamp has an energetic cult following.
In 2000, he was awarded the
National Medal of ArtsThe National Medal of Arts is an award and title created by the United States Congress in 1984, for the purpose of honoring artists and patrons of the arts. It is the highest honor conferred to an individual artist on behalf of the people. Honorees are selected by the National Endowment for the...
.
In 2001, Oldenburg and van Bruggen created 'Dropped Cone', a huge inverted ice cream cone, on top of a shopping center in
CologneCologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
, Germany.
His wife died on January 10, 2009, from the effects of breast cancer.
Claes Oldenburg supposedly has a work of art on the moon in the
Moon MuseumThe Moon Museum is a small ceramic wafer three-quarters of an inch by half an inch in size, containing artworks by six prominent artists from the late 1960s...
.
Paint Torch is slated for installation in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the fall of 2011.
Paint Torch is a towering 53-foot-high pop sculpture of a paintbrush, capped with bristles that will be illuminated at night. The sculpture will be installed at a daring 60-degree angle, as if in the act of painting.
Claes Oldenburg is represented by The
Pace GalleryThe Pace Gallery is a New York City-based exhibition space. It was founded in 1960 in Boston by Arne Glimcher.-PaceWildenstein:From 1993 until April 1, 2010, the gallery became "PaceWildenstein," a joint business venture between the Pace Gallery and Wildenstein & Co....
in New York.
Books
- Busch, Julia M., A Decade of Sculpture: the New Media in the 1960s (The Art Alliance Press: Philadelphia; Associated University Presses: London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, 1974) ISBN 0-87982-007-1
- Axsom, Richard H., Printed Stuff: Prints, Poster, and Ephemera by Claes Oldenburg A Catalogue Raisonne 1958–1996 (Hudson Hills Press: 1997) ISBN 1-555951-23-6
- Oldenburg, Claes Raw Notes: Documents and Scripts of the Performances: Stars, Moveyhouse, Massage, The Typewriter, with annotations by the author. (The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design: Halifax, 2005) ISBN 0-919616-43-7
- Gianelli, Ida and Beccaria, Marcella (editors) Claes Oldenburg Coosje van Bruggen: Sculpture by the Way Fundació Joan Miró
The ' is a museum of modern art honoring Joan Miró and located on the hill called Montjuïc in Barcelona, Catalonia.-History:...
2007
- Haskell, Barbara. Claes Oldenburg. Pasadena, CA: Pasadena Art Museum, 1971.
- Valentin, Eric, Claes Oldenburg, Coosje van Bruggen. Le grotesque contre le sacré, Paris, collection Art et artistes, Gallimard, 2009. ISBN 978-2-07-078627-5
External links