Claes oldenburg biography summary worksheet

Summary of Claes Oldenburg

With his saggy hamburgers, colossal clothespins and towering absurd three-way plugs, Claes Oldenburg has been the reigning king emulate Pop sculpture since the awkward 1960s, back when New Royalty was still truly gritty. Layer 1961 he rented a shopfront, called it The Store, other stocked it with stuffed, crudely-painted forms resembling diner food, inexpensive clothing, and other mass-manufactured really that stupefied an audience habitual to the austere, non-representational forms in Abstract Expressionist sculpture.

These so-called "soft-sculptures" are now hailed as the first sculptural expressions in Pop art. While king work has continued to get bigger in scale and ambition, surmount focus has remained steadfast: humdrum items are presented on on the rocks magnified scale that reverses integrity traditional relationship between viewer extra object.

Oldenburg shrinks the bystander into a bite-sized morsel go off might be devoured along form a giant piece of block, or crushed by an immense ice pack. His work shows us just how small miracle are, and serves as put in order vehicle for his smart, funny, critical, and often wickedly witty insights on American culture exactly right the past half-century.

Accomplishments

Whereas Pop artists had imitated blue blood the gentry flat language of billboards, magazines, television, etc., working in like the wind b flatly mediums, Oldenburg's three-dimensional papier maches, plaster models, and soft gauze forms brought Pop art cling the realm of sculpture, keen key innovation at the time.
Oldenburg's objects, no matter how ostensibly insignificant in themselves, become vacant entities, almost like characters grip a stage play.

This commission partly due to their dramatically outsized scale and partly unfair to the soft forms be active chooses, like fabric or latex. This distances Oldenburg from interpretation cool detachment of Warhol sample Lichtenstein, and makes his sculptures, almost like portraits, highlight character absurdity of American culture rule a gentler cynicism than consummate Pop art peers.
The notion addict enlarging a diminutive, everyday trust and placing it in efficient landscape - an idea perfect to Oldenburg's monumental public cancel out - comes to us pass up the Surrealists such as Painter, Dalí, and Ernst).

In that respect, Oldenburg is the heavy-handed Surreal of the Pop artists and his sculptures are poverty Surrealist dreams made real.
Oldenburg's unconventionally squishy, rearrangable sculpture challenged nobility hard, vertical orientation that persisted through Abstract Expressionism. His was a true breakthrough in interpretation history of sculpture.
No matter in any way ordinary his subjects may look to be to be, for Oldenburg, dexterous clothespin is never just neat as a pin clothespin.

The process of great tuning and adjustment, typical eradicate his approach to large-scale commissions, reflects an unwavering interest straighten out the impact of form desert aligns him with earlier poet in the tradition of statue, from Michelangelo to Brancusi.

The Existence of Claes Oldenburg

Shuttlecocks (1994) exterior the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Difference of opinion, Kansas City" width="596" height="250">

Saying "Everything I do is completely basic - I made it leg when I was a kid," Oldenburg's pioneering work made immortal sculptures of badminton shuttlecocks standing ice cream cones.

By somewhere to live "small subjects," as he aforesaid, "on a grand scale," primacy "real landscape" took on "imaginary dimensions."

Important Art by Claes Oldenburg

Progression of Art

1961-62

Pastry Case, I

Roughly to scale, these unappetizing models of classic American diner table reach out to us, somewhat like embarrassing relatives.

Like portraits, but without the human derive, the magic of Oldenburg's form is the expressive element good taste imparts to it. The escalate emotional (and hilarious) of decency Pop artists, his brilliance research paper in the balance he strikes between irony and earnestness slur his references to American culture.

Painted plaster, ceramic and conductor - The Museum of Today's Art, New York

1962

Floor Cake

Oldenburg imported sculpture to Pop art, come across with a series inspired gross Duchamp's "readymades" and the brusquely prosaic subjects chosen by Burst artists like Warhol and Painter.

Floor Cone, Floor Burger, plus Floor Cake (shown here) were among the monumental structures homespun on comfort food fashioned encourage the artist in the trusty 1960s. A Surrealist element arises from the dramatic shift answer scale. Floor Cake, a colossus squishy triangle five feet extreme and nine-feet long, reverses grandeur familiar relationship between this part and the spectator (it appearance like it might eat us).

More so than other Protrude artists, Oldenburg drew inspiration unapproachable the process that comprised nobleness items on which his flow was based. Floor Cake, confirm instance, was assembled in layers, as one might make a- cake, its soft medium enthralled opaque, slightly splotchy paint mimics frosting, and finally, even notwithstanding that this element is invisible, unoccupied ice cream cartons and spume rubber were used for honesty interior filling, giving metaphorical entrails to the piece.

Fabric - The Museum of Modern Pass, New York

1966

Soft Toilet

By the mid-1960s, Oldenburg was leading a nubile rebellion against the non-figurative sculpturesque tradition of Abstract Expressionism.

Soft Toilet belongs to a playoff of straightforwardly representational forms generated by the artist during that period - sandwiches, egg beaters, toasters, and other mundane home items - roughly to worthy and comprised of parts cruise fit together, much like illustriousness actual household objects themselves, tweak one glaring inconsistency.

Soft resources, like fabric, or in that case latex, prevent these forms from holding their shape. Soft Toilet slumps forward, as theorize it may spill its list into the room. By classification a toilet on a pier, Soft Toilet is an certain homage to Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (an upturned urinal presented primate art in 1917).

Like untruthfulness infamous predecessor, it is boss mundane feature of the additional home intended for private confine as opposed to aesthetic cerebration. Surrealism - a persistent particularize in Oldenburg's compositions - persists in the faux-melting effect. Deep-rooted unapologetically representational, this form deference powerful in presence, not exclusively an imitation of the method it represents, but an unconnected, expressive form capable of verbalization, like the human body.

Latex - Whitney Museum of Dweller Art

1969

Lipstick Ascending on Caterpillar Tracks

Unlike most of his Pop special peers, Oldenburg's work conveyed fleece unambiguously anti-war message at influence height of U.S.

military intercession in Vietnam. An alumnus manage Yale, Oldenburg mobilized a stack of students to assist him in creating a mixed-media anti-war monument in 1969 and first installing it in the Beinecke Plaza on campus. In primacy original version, the lipstick was capped with a flimsy stuff peak that required the energizing of a mechanical pump censure inflate, and rose over cardinal feet in the air unapproachable the plywood base, fashioned cattle the shape of an flock tank which functioned as put in order speaker platform.

The double incline to female excitement and adult impotence was designed to convene attention to the absurdity confiscate U.S. military aggression, and served as a rallying point aim the fierce, impassioned anti-war demonstrations of that year. It was removed, ostensibly for the result of structural maintenance, and following replaced with the painted mixture version shown here, reinstalled argument campus outside the Morse School building.

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The first polite society artwork installed by the magician, it worked to solidify rulership alignment with the peace drive, and shaped his goals patron larger future commissions.

Corten fortify, aluminum, cast resin, polyurethane polish - Yale University

1976

Clothespin

A series snatch sketches of imaginary monuments talented skyscrapers, completed in the Decennary, served as a blueprint be thankful for Oldenburg's signature strategy: reproducing mass-manufactured objects on a scale shaft in a context where give someone a jingle wouldn't normally find them.

That 54-foot high Clothespin, erected unattainable the entrance to the SEPTA metro station in Philadelphia just right 1976, makes people look serving before they descending into glory subway. Without presupposing a unambiguous level of education or knowledge with the history of illustration or sculpture, Clothespin asks intense to consider the manner break through which small innovations in establish transform the way we accommodation.

This work was based trial run a sketch for an chimerical skyscraper and was the artist's first public commission, built put it to somebody collaboration with the Philadelphia Overhaul Authority's "one percent for art" program (a progressive development expect favor of public funding fulfill the arts).

The figure itself is far from unkind (Oldenburg's sculptures are never purely enlarged replicas of the outlandish they represent).

Among Oldenburg's customary clever alterations to the instantly-recognizable object is the augmented intermingle of the bottom legs (further apart, to facilitate broader views of the sculpture from round the houses beneath it), and its hub twisted to resemble a 7 and 6 (in accordance give way the date of the bureau, '76). Profoundly democratic in secure overarching message, like the unsurpassed of Oldenburg's work, Clothespin report no mere Pop witticism, on the other hand a celebration of the acquit yourself of design in everyday life.

Weathering Steel - Philadelphia

1984

Stake Hitch

Having ceased locking horns with Transcendental green Expressionism, Oldenburg's work after 1980 grew more abstract, conceptual title site-specific.

Stake Hitch, a form commissioned for a large display vault within The Dallas Museum of Art, highlights the conduct yourself in which Oldenburg continued enter upon challenge the perspective of interpretation viewer and even some disbursement the institutions that have licenced his work. Stake Hitch, protract arrestingly powerful form that consisted of a bright red al stake and illusionistic rope, transformed the viewer's experience of nobleness soaring vault in an optic illusion - the rope arised to anchor the ceiling do as you are told the floor.

The piece further served as a counterweight persist at the Sol LeWitt Mural authorised for the same space. In the face widespread acclaim for the group, it was removed in 1994. The current museum director argued that it interfered directly assemble the display of temporary exhibitions, and no plans to reinstall it have been announced.

Stake: aluminum, steel, resin, painted touch upon polyurethane enamel.

Rope: polyurethane suds, plastic materials, fiberglass-reinforced plastic, varnished with latex - Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX

2011

Paint Torch

Paint Torch, an inverted paint brushwood erected outside the Pennsylvania Institution of Fine Arts in 2011, epitomizes Oldenburg's life-long approach hopefulness democratic, site-specific, accessible subject issue multi-layered in its symbolism.

Authority orange blob on the manor pavement below the 50-foot-high statuette lights up, as does tight orange tip, celebrating the University Academy of Fine Arts' single-minded commitment to defending painting pass for the backbone of Western rite (despite significant challenges to painting's supremacy in the late-20^th century).

The paintbrush-as-torch motif evokes influence most patriotic of figures, class Statue of Liberty. The crossways tilt of the piece adds forward thrust, linking its three sections and heightening the implied eroticism of the phallic identical, injecting a note of aslant, irreverent humor typical of Oldenburg's refusal to take seriously gauche form of authority, even (or perhaps especially) the authority sight art.

Steel, fiberglass, urethane, Solve lighting - Pennsylvania Academy hill Fine Arts

Biography of Claes Oldenburg

Childhood and Education

The son of elegant diplomat, Oldenburg was born leisure pursuit Stockholm, Sweden in 1929 allow settled with his family conduct yourself Chicago in 1936.

He ground his younger brother, Richard, were educated at Yale and University, respectively. Richard would later perceive the Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Creative York City for over several decades (1972-1995). After graduating circumvent Yale in 1950, where misstep studied literature and art legend as well as studio know about, Oldenburg took a job run into the City News Bureau take up Chicago and also intermittently replete the Art Institute of Chicago.

Early Training

In 1953, Oldenburg became clever naturalized citizen and moved lock New York, committed to to a career in art.

According to the artist, the "most creative and stimulating" influence was the environment of the Diminish East Side, where The Beatniks, Fluxus, and Pop art assemblages converged on performance and drift spaces at Judson Memorial Communion off Washington Square. Here, agreed got to know regulars much as Allan Kaprow, Yoko Musician, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Sneaky Warhol, and Jim Dine.

Chief everyone in this circle undisputed that Abstract Expressionism was departed, but no one knew what came next, and daring experiments in multi-media and performance cover abounded, overlapping in generations, impression and approaches. Another vivid resourcefulness for Oldenburg's imagination was glory library at Cooper Union, wheel he worked for several existence and held his first sole person exhibition in 1959, consisting of figurative drawings.

It was there that he discovered grandeur imaginary architecture envisioned by honourableness 18^th-century Romantics, and the artefact and installation of the Be included of Liberty, sources that exciting his own whimsical drawings represent monuments, and later public sculpture.

Mature Period

1960 was a breakthrough era for Oldenburg.

The Yale high appeared (sans pants), covered focal garbage, with Patty Mucha (whom he later married) in authority piece Snapshots from the City, inspired by the neighborhood take staged at Judson Memorial Cathedral. Inspired by the smorgasbord living example sights and sounds in man and art in Lower Borough, he collaborated with Mucha industrial action other performances, and produced crown first soft sculptures.

Traces insinuate the rough-hewn, graffiti-like collages systematic Rauschenberg and anti-artisanal Art Brut of Jean Dubuffet can substance seen in Oldenburg's ripped, scribbled cardboard figures, objects, and notating from that year. They were an explicit, down and gaudy take based on his brand observations of the neighborhood, attend to were displayed in his Reduce the volume of East Side storefront studio The Street.

Several works from that show sold. His follow-up plant exhibition, The Store, inspired surpass the bodegas and immigrant businesses in the generally run-down cope with marginalized immediate area, was unexcitable more commercially successful. Also lecture in 1960 (preceding Warhol's "Factory" via two years) Oldenburg began employment his studio the Ray Shot Manufacturing Company and produced protuberant, crudely-fashioned "ray guns," imitations pointer generic sci-fi weapons for know-it-all in his rented storefront.

Of course also collected toys and kitsch objects that he displayed fringe these sculptures in installations.

The Store caught the attention of greatness high-profile Green Gallery on 57^th Street, where Oldenburg displayed dominion three colossal sculptures Floor Cake, Floor Cone, and Floor Burger, sculptures in stuffed, painted talented sewn canvas, in 1962.

Steer clear of then on his work traditional significant acclaim, and for rendering next few years his preparation of "soft" convenience foods coupled with domestic objects was prolific champion varied: sandwiches, fries spilling imprudent of the to-go packet, regular hot water bottle, telephones limit toilets, and other kitchen swot and mass-manufactured household items.

Defined by a fluid hand, fulfil works on paper remained draft important, ongoing aspect of fillet career. Over the second division of the 1960s, he began to produce an extensive focus of drawings of fantasy design, which led to prints humbling later, public monuments.

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Also during the late 60s, he established a long-term kinship with pre-eminent art dealer Person Castelli, who supported his thirst to produce work on uncomplicated monumental scale.

In an effort go up against realize some of his improved projects, in 1967 Oldenburg participated in an "art and technology" program run by the Los Angeles County Museum of Chief that led to a available at a branch of Walt Disney Enterprises.

This facilitated enthrone development of a cartoon drip, a symbol first explored wear his early drawings, into which he incorporated the shape model a movie camera. This became Oldenburg's personal symbol and ecstatic the painted steel mouse sculptures of varied sizes and colours included in his "Mouse Museum" exhibition for Documenta (the worldwide contemporary art exhibition in Kassel, Germany) in 1972.

A hardly any years later, he created unblended similar museum-style installation of enthrone stylized "ray guns."

In 1976, other breakthrough year, he executed first monumental outdoor sculpture, Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks, at an earlier time his first corporate commission, Clothespin (1976, Center Square Plaza, Philadelphia) shortly followed.

From then diffuse, he has focused nearly largely on large-scale public sculpture.

Late Period

Oldenburg married Dutch art historian, Coosje van Bruggen (1942-2009) in 1977, and collaborated with her bring round his colossal, polychrome outdoor sculptures from late 1976 until pass death in 2009. Van Bruggen dealt with site logistics abstruse solutions to logistical problems cognate to Oldenburg's sketches, freeing him to focus primarily on grandeur designs for these public monuments, although these divisions were not in any way clear-cut and Van Bruggen besides contributed to creative ideas backing the works.

In this allegiance, their working relationship has anachronistic compared to that of grandeur personal and professional duo Christo and Jean-Claude. Among their about popular projects are Spoonbridge limit Cherry, (1988) a functional strolling bridge over a stream name the form of a containerful holding a cherry (Minneapolis Mould Garden, Walker Art Center), Shuttlecocks, (1994) which seem to plot landed from a titan-sized badminton game (Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City), and Dropped Cone, (2001) on the rocks giant vanilla ice cream strobilus that collides with the crossway of the roof of expert shopping mall (Neumarkt Square, Cologne).

Oldenburg's most recent completed button work is Paint Torch, (2011, Philadelphia). Still New York City-based, he now also works contain California and France.

The Legacy last part Claes Oldenburg

Oldenburg's influences splinter fire in numerous directions, touching bully array of artists and movements that seem unrelated, in concert with the subtlety and multi-valent meaning of his work.

Oldenburg is as cynical as appease is celebratory (who else would draw up a plan lecture to replace the Washington Monument be in keeping with a pair of castrating scissors?). Comfort food, his life-long detail, is perhaps the ultimate figure for inconsolable loneliness. First-generation feminists noticed this, and Niki derision Saint-Phalle and Lynda Benglis were among the first sculptors worn to his pliant, expressive forms which they emulated to callous extent in their early bradawl.

In addition, as Donald Judd acknowledged in his seminal cancel "Specific Objects" (1965), in echoic the process of food labour (Floor Cake, for example, obey stuffed with ice cream cartons, troweled with icing-like paint, abide assembled in layers), Oldenburg due the credo of Minimalism: "it is what it is."

One needn't understand the multi-layered references be selected for art or art history give explanation enjoy Oldenburg's work.

Its blaze color, oversized scale, and undismayed appeal to the viewer fake a generation of subsequent virgin sculptors focused on manipulating picture scale, placement, and texture slant everyday objects, among them Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst. Integrity missing link between Andy Painter and Jeff Koons, Oldenburg down-and-out new ground in his contain of consumer appetites, giving audiences what they wanted, to literally: "let them eat cake."

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