Of all the major American pop artists, Claes Oldenburg was the only one born in Europe. He was still in elementary school when his father, a Swedish diplomat, moved his family to this country. They settled in Chicago, where the history of architecture is highly regarded, and claim to be the birthplace of skyscrapers, rather than unjustly.
This was definitely important for Oldenberg. Oldenberg’s work has the distrust of outsiders on an American scale and scale. His sculpture looks back on the moment of self-satisfaction during the Eisenhower era. It was a time when Americans built the tallest buildings, drove finned cars, and ate large, cholesterol-rich burgers covered with cheese instead of small Swedish meatballs. Concerns about the carbon footprint or the national obesity epidemic have led to a reassessment of the pursuit of joy.
Oldenburg, who died at his home in Manhattan on Monday at the age of 93, revolutionized our thinking of what a public monument is. Instead of the bronze sculptures of a man on a horse and the forgotten patriots who stand on a pedestal and hand over and play timelessly, Oldenberg is an object that immerses our civilian space in nostalgia. Inflated to an absurd ratio. It is interesting that many of his subjects are screened from the realm of the house and the pursuit of traditional women.His sculptures of lipstick cases and garden spades, his “Clothespin” (Steel version of a 45-foot high wooden clothespin in Center City, Philadelphia) or near it Engraving his “split button” (A beloved meeting place at the University of Pennsylvania) — Everything is based on the type of object at the bottom of the mother’s wallet.
Same as above in “Typewriter Eraser, Scale X” (1999) in the Sculpture Garden of the National Museum of Art in Washington-Have men ever dealt with such objects? This sculpture is a 20-foot-high stainless steel vintage eraser with a small brush. It was the favorite of the generation of female secretaries who entered it on IBM Selectrics before the computer’s erase key appeared. The blue-haired “typewriter eraser”, tilted her head and arranged like a windswept, continues to be a strong tribute to the act of erasing, and art is not only what you put in it, but what you take out. But it reminds me of that.
After graduating from Yale University in 1956, Oldenberg moved to New York in time to join the endangered bohemian environment. His career began with a spirit of radical enthusiasm. Like Jim Dine, one of the last survivors of the original pop artist, Oldenburg was the organizer of “Happenings.” This is a theater event performed by a non-actor in a non-theatre. Costumed painters relied on the participation of the audience to help achieve their stated goal of breaking the boundaries between art and life.
Oldenberg’s current historic installation, The Store, had a blatantly general title, pointing to an area of increasingly commercial galleries. Opened in December 1961 at 107 East Second Street for rent, visitors were able to buy food, clothing, jewelry and other items. (One of The Store’s items, “Braselette,” is a depiction of a female corset cartoon painted on a biased red rectangle, which will be available from Friday. “New York: 1962-1964” An important research exhibition at the Jewish Museum. )
Indeed, the most memorable relic from the store is “Pastry Case I” (1961-2), this lives in a permanent collection Museum of Modern Art, New York.. It consists of the kind of glass case that once sat on the countertop of the dining room. Inside are wide slices of blueberry pie, candy apples and ice cream sundae. These are probably in the freezer instead, but don’t worry. Melt it! that way! These are sloppy and fun desserts big enough to share with a date, not the 21st century stomach-savvy American desert that thrills Baked by Melissa’s mini cupcakes.
Oldenburg was not the first artist to make sculptures of everyday objects. Shortly before The Store opened, Jasper Johns exhibited two painted bronze sculptures of Balantine ale cans, still life when they asked viewers whether they were real cans or handmade objects. The tradition of painting has been shifted to three dimensions. Instead of such a philosophical conundrum, Oldenburg pursued the classic pop agenda in that his sculpture was inseparable from his identity as a consumer object. He had the unique ability to bring a sense of sculptural life, animation to an unlikely subject.
Many of his strongest works are unimaginable without the participation of his first wife, Patty Mucha, an artist who played in happenings and sewed so-called soft sculpture. The 1962 Green Gallery exhibition featured giant slices of sponge cake, ice cream cones, and burgers. All of these were about the size of a living room sofa and sat snugly on the floor. They and the soft sculptures that follow — soft typewriters, soft light switches — represent his best work. One of the reasons is that I feel that the sagging, rugged presence is invested in the pity of the human body.
In an unpublished memoir she shared with me, Mucha details the exact role she played in the creation of her husband’s work. For example, when she made his “floor burger (giant hamburger)” in 1962, she brought a portable singer sewing machine to the Green Gallery in Uptown.I say our The studio is because at this point all construction was accomplished by sewing. This is a technique that Cress had little knowledge of. “
She continues. “Sewing itself was a daunting task. It could be physically almost impossible to sit on the floor and pull bulky fabric from the throttle of a portable sewing machine.” The needle broke. She shed blood on the sculpture. After she sewed them, Oldenburg helped her fill the sculpture with filler and then painted them.
Oldenburg divorced Mucha in 1970 after a 10-year marriage. The truth is that his art lost some of its warmth and tenderness at that time. Instead of a cheerful, rugged, heavy and soft sculpture, he began to make monumental sculptures with a hard metal surface. Some wonder if he felt guilty about abandoning his first wife, who played such a big role in his early success. As if to redeem, he began to admire his next wife, Kusha van Bryggen, who was trained as an art historian rather than an artist. His name appears alongside him in all his future works.
Unlike his fellow pop star Andy Warhol, Oldenburg was by no means a public figure and his art was more recognized than he was. As a personality, he could come across as Dur. Art critic Barbara Rose, who wrote the catalog for the 1969 Museum of Modern Art in New York, describes him in her diary as “looking like a bookkeeper, calm and economical.” ..
Tatiana Grossman, The founder of the development of the legendary print publisher Universal Limited Art Editions recalled being angry when Oldenburg rejected her proposal and advised that “I already have a mother.” rice field.
The Oldenberg Champion points out that he was a great draftsman and a deep thinker who made many clever drawings for unrealized sculptures (and like a noble failed project). There is no such thing as “intelligent”). In 1965, he sketched a plan for an anti-war monument, consisting of a giant concrete engraved with the names of the war dead, designed to permanently block traffic on Broadway and Canal Street. But I don’t think these will damage his reputation. He is undoubtedly a leading artist and will be remembered as the power of world democracy, like the father of his ambassador. But weird.
Sometimes his work was expensive. In the 90’s, the gift shop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was on sale Oldenberg’s “NYC Pretzel” (1994), a 6-inch high cardboard version of those salt-studded pretzels hawked on the streets of New York. I think I paid all $ 50 for it, and knowing that it was part of the open edition (not limited), I liked it more. It’s still in my mantelpiece.
I also bought another little Oldenberg — a cake sliver on a white dessert plate. The piece of cake consists of a 2 inch long painted plaster stick, but the plate is a real plate purchased by the artist in a real store. I say this one morning so that I can understand my horror when I open the dishwasher and notice that someone in the house (remaining unknown) has washed the dishes in Oldenburg. I took it out and the plate is still hot. I turned it over and gasped. The artist’s signature-the “CO” written in black-was shed.
But other than that, the work remained sweet. I think it’s a homage to Oldenburg that he is the only artist who can survive in the dishwasher.
