Claes Oldenburg What Art Theory Best Describes His Work?

Swedish-born American sculptor

Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg in 2012
Born	(1929-01-28) January 28, 1929 (age 93) Stockholm, Sweden
Nationality	Swedish-American
Education	Latin School of Chicago, Fine art Institute of Chicago, Yale Academy
Known for	sculpture, artist
Movement	Pop Art, Avant-garde[1]
Awards	Rolf Schock Prizes in Visual Arts (1995)

Claes Oldenburg (built-in Jan 28, 1929) is a Swedish-born American sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring large replicas of everyday objects. Another theme in his work is soft sculpture versions of everyday objects. Many of his works were made in collaboration with his wife, Coosje van Bruggen, who died in 2009; they had been married for 32 years. Oldenburg lives and works in New York.

Early life and pedagogy [edit]

Claes Oldenburg was built-in on January 28, 1929 in Stockholm, the son of Gösta Oldenburg^[2] and his wife Sigrid Elisabeth née Lindforss.^[3] His father was then a Swedish diplomat stationed in New York and in 1936 was appointed Consul Full general of Sweden to Chicago where Oldenburg grew upward, attention the Latin Schoolhouse of Chicago. He studied literature and art history at Yale University^[four] from 1946 to 1950, then returned to Chicago where he took classes at The School of the Art Plant of Chicago. While further developing his craft, he worked equally a reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago. He too opened his own studio and, in 1953, became a naturalized citizen of the United states. In 1956, he moved to New York, and for a time worked in the library of the Cooper Marriage Museum for the Arts of Decoration, where he too took the opportunity to learn more, on his own, about the history of art.^[5]

Work [edit]

Oldenburg'south first recorded sales of artworks were^{[ when? ]} at the 57th Street Art Fair in Chicago, where he sold v items for a full price of $25.^[6] He moved dorsum to New York City in 1956. There he met a number of artists, including Jim Dine, Scarlet Grooms, and Allan Kaprow, whose happenings incorporated theatrical aspects and provided an alternative to the abstract expressionism that had come to dominate much of the art scene. Oldenburg began toying with the idea of soft sculpture in 1957, when he completed a free-hanging piece made from a adult female's stocking stuffed with newspaper. (The piece was untitled when he made it but is at present referred to as Sausage.)^[7]

By 1960, Oldenburg had produced sculptures containing but rendered figures, messages and signs, inspired past the Lower East Side neighborhood where he lived, made out of materials such equally cardboard, burlap, and newspapers; in 1961, he shifted his method, creating sculptures from chicken wire covered with plaster-soaked canvas and enamel paint, depicting everyday objects – articles of clothing and food items.^[viii] Oldenburg's outset testify that included three-dimensional works, in May 1959, was at the Judson Gallery, at Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square.^[9] During this fourth dimension, creative person Robert Beauchamp described Oldenburg equally "vivid", due to the reaction that the pop artist brought to a "dull" abstract expressionist menstruum.^[10]

In the 1960s, Oldenburg became associated with the pop art move and created many so-called happenings, which were performance art related productions of that time. The proper name he gave to his own productions was "Ray Gun Theater". The bandage of colleagues who appeared in his Performances included artists Lucas Samaras, Tom Wesselmann, Carolee Schneemann, Oyvind Fahlstrom and Richard Artschwager, dealer Annina Nosei, critic Barbara Rose, and screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer.^[7] His first wife (1960–1970) Patty Mucha, who sewed many of his early soft sculptures, was a constant performer in his happenings. This brash, often humorous, approach to art was at swell odds with the prevailing sensibility that, by its nature, art dealt with "profound" expressions or ideas. But Oldenburg'south spirited art found beginning a niche then a great popularity that endures to this solar day. In December 1961, he rented a store on Manhattan's Lower East Side to house "The Store", a month-long installation he had first presented at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York, stocked with sculptures roughly in the course of consumer appurtenances.^[seven]

Oldenburg moved to Los Angeles in 1963 "considering information technology was the most opposite thing to New York [he] could think of".^[7] That same twelvemonth, he conceived AUT OBO DYS, performed in the parking lot of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in December 1963. In 1965 he turned his attention to drawings and projects for imaginary outdoor monuments. Initially these monuments took the form of small collages such as a crayon paradigm of a fat, fuzzy teddy bear looming over the grassy fields of New York's Central Park (1965)^[11] and Lipsticks in Piccadilly Circus, London (1966).^[12] In 1967, New York city cultural adviser Sam Green realized Oldenburg's outset outdoor public monument; Placid Civic Monument took the class of a Conceptual performance/action behind the Metropolitan Museum of Fine art, New York, with a coiffure of gravediggers digging a 6-by-3-foot rectangular hole in the ground.^[iv] In 1969, Oldenberg contributed a drawing to the Moon Museum. Geometric Mouse-Scale A, Black ane/6, likewise from 1969, was selected to exist role of the Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Fine art Collection in Albany, NY.^[13]

Many of Oldenburg'due south large-scale sculptures of mundane objects elicited ridicule before being accepted. For case, the 1969 Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks, was removed from its original place in Beinecke Plaza at Yale University, and "circulated on a loan basis to other campuses".^[14] With its "bright color, gimmicky grade and material and its ignoble subject, it attacked the sterility and pretentiousness of the classicistic building behind it". The artist "pointed out it opposed levity to solemnity, color to colorlessness, metallic to stone, simple to a sophisticated tradition. In theme, information technology is both phallic, life-engendering, and a bomb, the harbinger of expiry. Male person in form, it is female in subject..."^[14] One of a number of sculptures that have interactive capabilities, it now resides in the Morse College courtyard.

From the early on 1970s, Oldenburg concentrated almost exclusively on public commissions.^[12] His first public work, 3-Fashion Plug came on commission from Oberlin Higher with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.^[15] His collaboration with Dutch/American writer and art historian Coosje van Bruggen dates from 1976. Their first collaboration came when Oldenburg was commissioned to rework Trowel I, a 1971 sculpture of an oversize garden tool, for the grounds of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, the Netherlands.^[16] Oldenburg has officially signed all the piece of work he has washed since 1981 with both his own name and van Bruggen'due south.^[7] In 1988, the two created the iconic Spoonbridge and Ruby-red sculpture for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis that remains a staple of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden also as a classic image of the city. Typewriter Eraser, Calibration 10 (1999) is in the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden. Some other well known construction is the Free Stamp in downtown Cleveland.^[17]

In addition to freestanding projects, they occasionally contributed to architectural projects, amidst them, 2 Los Angeles projects in collaboration with architect Frank Gehry: Toppling Ladder With Spilling Pigment, which was installed at Loyola Law Schoolhouse in 1986, and the building-mounted sculpture Behemothic Binoculars, completed in Venice in 1991.^[vii] The couple'due south collaboration with Gehry also involved a return to performance for Oldenburg when the trio presented Il Corso del Coltello, in Venice, Italia, in 1985; other characters were portrayed past Germano Celant and Pontus Hultén.^[18] "Coltello" is the source of Knife Ship, a big-calibration sculpture that served as the central prop; it was later seen in Los Angeles in 1988 when Oldenburg, Van Bruggen and Gehry presented Coltello Recalled: Reflections on a Performance at the Japanese American Cultural & Customs Center and the exhibition Props, Costumes and Designs for the Performance "Il Corso del Coltello" at Margo Leavin Gallery.^[seven]

In 2001, Oldenburg and van Bruggen created Dropped Cone, a huge inverted water ice cream cone, on meridian of a shopping center in Cologne, Germany.^[nineteen] Installed at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2011, Paint Torch is a towering 53 anxiety high pop sculpture of a paintbrush, capped with bristles that are illuminated at nighttime. The sculpture is installed at a daring 60-degree bending, as if in the act of painting.^[xx]

Exhibitions [edit]

Oldenburg's first one-man bear witness in 1959, at the Judson Gallery in New York, had shown figurative drawings and papier-mâché sculptures.^[12] He was honored with a solo exhibition of his work at the Moderna Museet (organized past Pontus Hultén), in 1966; the Museum of Modernistic Art, New York, in 1969; London'southward Tate Gallery in 1970 (chronicled in a 1970 twin-projection documentary by James Scott called The Corking Ice Cream Robbery ^[21]); and with a retrospective organized by Germano Celant at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,^[22] New York, in 1995 (travelling to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Frg, Bonn; and Hayward Gallery, London). In 2002 the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York held a retrospective of the drawings of Oldenburg and Van Bruggen; the same year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York exhibited a selection of their sculptures on the roof of the museum.^[4]

Oldenburg is represented past The Pace Gallery in New York and Margo Leavin Gallery in Los Angeles.

The city of Milan, Italy, commissioned the work known equally Needle, Thread and Knot (Italian: Agone, filo e nodo) which is installed in the Piazzale Cadorna.

In 2018, The Maze was included in 1968: Sparta Dreaming Athens at Château de Montsoreau-Museum of Contemporary Art.^[23]

Recognition [edit]

In 1989, Oldenburg won the Wolf Prize in Arts. In 2000, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.^[24] Oldenburg has also received honorary degrees from Oberlin College, Ohio, in 1970; Art Constitute of Chicago, Illinois, in 1979; Bard College, New York, in 1995; and Royal Higher of Art, London, in 1996, as well every bit the following awards: Brandeis Academy Sculpture Award, 1971; Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture, 1972; Fine art Constitute of Chicago, Get-go Prize Sculpture Honor, 72nd American Exhibition, 1976; Medal, American Plant of Architects, 1977; Wilhelm-Lehmbruck Prize for Sculpture, Duisburg, Germany, 1981; Brandeis University Creative Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Accomplishment, The Jack I. and Lillian Poses Medal for Sculpture, 1993; Rolf Schock Foundation Prize, Stockholm, Sweden, 1995. He is a member of the American Academy and Plant of Arts and Letters since 1975 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1978.^[25]

Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen have together received honorary degrees from California College of the Arts, San Francisco, California, in 1996; University of Teesside, Middlesbrough, England, in 1999; Nova Scotia College of Art and Blueprint, Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 2005; the College for Artistic Studies in Detroit, Michigan, in 2005, and the Pennsylvania University of Fine Arts, 2011. Awards of their collaboration include the Distinction in Sculpture, SculptureCenter, New York (1994); Nathaniel South. Saltonstall Award, Constitute of Gimmicky Art, Boston (1996); Partners in Education Award, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2002); and Medal Award, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2004).^[25]

In her 16-minute, 16mm film Manhattan Mouse Museum (2011), creative person Tacita Dean captured Oldenburg in his studio equally he gently handles and dusts the minor objects that line his bookshelves. The film is less almost the artist'due south iconography than the embedded intellectual process that allows him to transform everyday objects into remarkable sculptural forms.^[26]

Personal life [edit]

Patty Mucha, who was married to Claes Oldenburg from 1960 to 1970, get-go met him after she moved to New York in 1957 to get an artist. When Oldenburg was painting portraits, Patty Mucha became one of his nude models^[27] before becoming his kickoff wife. An Oldenburg drawing of Patty titled Pat Reading in Bed, Lenox, 1959,^[28] is in the drove of The Whitney Museum of American Fine art. She was a constant performer in Oldenburg's happenings and performed with The Druds.

Between 1969 and 1977, Oldenburg was in a relationship with the feminist artist and sculptor, Hannah Wilke, who died in 1993.^[29] They shared several studios and traveled together, and Wilke often photographed him.

Oldenburg and his second married woman, Coosje van Bruggen, met in 1970 when Oldenburg'southward first major retrospective traveled to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where van Bruggen was a curator.^[30] They were married in 1977.^[31]

In 1992, Oldenburg and van Bruggen caused Château de la Borde, a modest Loire Valley chateau, whose music room gave them the idea of making a domestically sized collection.^[30] Van Bruggen and Oldenburg renovated the house, decorating it with modernist pieces by Le Corbusier, Charles and Ray Eames, Alvar Aalto, Frank Gehry, Eileen Gray.^[32] Van Bruggen died on Jan 10, 2009, from the effects of breast cancer.^[16]

Oldenburg's brother, art historian Richard East. Oldenburg, was director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, between 1972 and 1993,^[7] and subsequently chairman of Sotheby'southward America.^[33]

Fine art market [edit]

Oldenburg'southward sculpture Typewriter Eraser (1976), the third slice from an edition of three, was sold for $2.2 million at Christie'southward New York in 2009.^[34]

Gallery [edit]

• 

  Flight Pins by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Eindhoven, Netherlands

• 

• 

• 

  Bound 2006, Coosje van Bruggen and Claes Oldenburg, Cheonggyecheon, Seoul, Korea

• 

  Dropped Cone 2001, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Neumarkt expanse, Cologne, Germany

• 

See as well [edit]

• Cupid's Span, San Francisco
• Coosje van Bruggen

Books [edit]

• Axsom, Richard H., Printed Stuff: Prints, Poster, and Ephemera by Claes Oldenburg A Catalogue Raisonne 1958–1996 (Hudson Hills Press: 1997) ISBN 1-55595-123-six
• Busch, Julia G., A Decade of Sculpture: the New Media in the 1960s (The Art Alliance Press: Philadelphia; Associated University Presses: London, 1974) ISBN 0-87982-007-ane
• Gianelli, Ida and Beccaria, Marcella (editors) Claes Oldenburg Coosje van Bruggen: Sculpture by the Way Fundació Joan Miró 2007
• Haskell, Barbara. Claes Oldenburg, Pasadena, CA: Pasadena Art Museum, 1971
• Höchdorfer, Achim, Claes Oldenburg: The Sixties (Prestel: USA, 2012) ISBN 3791352059
• Johnson, Ellen H. Claes Oldenburg, Penguin Books, (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England; Baltimore, Maryland, United states of america; Ringwood, Victoria, Australia), 1971
• Oldenburg, Claes Log May 1974 – August 1976, Stuttgart: edition hansjorg mayer, 1976 (Two volume boxed fix: "Photo Log" and "Press Log")
• Oldenburg, Claes Raw Notes: Documents and Scripts of the Performances: Stars, Moveyhouse, Massage, The Typewriter, with annotations by the writer. (The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design: Halifax, 2005) ISBN 0-919616-43-7
• Thalacker, Donald Due west. "The Place of Art in the Earth of Architecture." Chelsea House Publishers, New York, 1980. ISBN 0-87754-098-v
• Valentin, Eric, Claes Oldenburg, Coosje van Bruggen. Le grotesque contre le sacré, Paris, drove Art et artistes, Gallimard, 2009. ISBN 978-ii-07-078627-5
• Valentin, Eric, Claes Oldenburg et Coosje van Bruggen. La sculpture comme subversion de l'architecture (1981–1997), Dijon, drove Inflexion, Les Presses du réel [fr], 2012 ISBN 978-2-84066-450-5

References [edit]

1. ^ James O. Immature (2001). "Art and Knowledge." New York: Routledge, p. 135.
2. ^ "Gosta Oldenburg; Retired Diplomat, 98". The New York Times. April ane, 1992. Retrieved April 29, 2014.
3. ^ Sigrid Oldenburg. "Sigrid Oldenburg". waatp.se. Retrieved Apr 29, 2014. ^{[ permanent expressionless link ]}
4. ^ ^{a b c} Claes Oldenburg Archived May 10, 2012, at the Wayback Machine Guggenheim Collection.
5. ^ "Claes Oldenburg." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998; later on: Gale. Retrieved via Biography in Context database, October 22, 2017.
6. ^ David McCracken, "The Art Fair That's Been In the Motion-picture show the Longest", Chicago Tribune, June 5, 1987, page 3
7. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} Kristine McKenna (July 2, 1995), When Bigger Is Better: Claes Oldenburg has spent the by 35 years blowing upwardly and redefining everyday objects, all in the name of getting art off its pedestal Los Angeles Times.
8. ^ "Claes Oldenburg: On View, Apr 14 – Aug 5, 2013". Museum of Modern Fine art. moma.org. Sections "Introduction", The Street" and "The Shop". Retrieved Oct 23, 2017.
9. ^ Claes Oldenburg, "Remembering Judson House," New York: Judson Memorial Church building, p. 292
10. ^ Paul Cummings (1975). "Oral history interview with Robert Beauchamp, 1975 Jan. 16". Oral history interview. Archives of American Art. Retrieved June 30, 2011.
11. ^ Christopher Knight (August 6, 1995), The Percolating Mind of Oldenburg : A retrospective shows how ideas from early in a career tin cook for decades, before emerging to enshrine the mundane Los Angeles Times.
12. ^ ^{a b c} Claes Oldenburg Museum of Modern Fine art, New York.
13. ^ "Empire State Plaza Fine art Collection".
14. ^ ^{a b} Johnson, Ellen H. (1971). Claes Oldenburg. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books. p. 46.
15. ^ Duffes, Melissa. "Oldenburg'southward Showtime Commissioned Public Sculpture Returns to AMAM". Oberlin College. Retrieved Oct 12, 2013.
16. ^ ^{a b} Carol Kino (January 13, 2009), Coosje van Bruggen, Sculptor, Dies at 66 The New York Times.
17. ^ Roy, Chris; Edmonds, Joe. "The Free Postage". Cleveland Historical . Retrieved Baronial 10, 2020.
18. ^ Claes Oldenburg: Props, Costumes and Designs for the Performance "Il Corso del Coltello", January nine – February xiii, 1988 Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles.
19. ^ "Dropped Cone". Oldenburgvanbruggen.com. Retrieved April 29, 2014.
20. ^ "Oldenburg's Paint Torch | 1805". Pafa.org. Retrieved Apr 29, 2014.
21. ^ "Double vision: the joys of twin-project movie theater". British Motion-picture show Institute . Retrieved Dec 1, 2015.
22. ^ John Russell (March half-dozen, 1995), Oldenburg Once again: Whimsy and Latent Humanity The New York Times.
23. ^ Sevior, Michelle (November 7, 2018). "ArtPremium – 1968 - Sparta Dreaming Athens at Château de Montsoreau-Museum Contemporary Art". ArtPremium . Retrieved Baronial 10, 2019.
24. ^ Lifetime Honors – National Medal of Arts Archived March 4, 2010, at the Wayback Auto
25. ^ ^{a b} Oldenburg Biography Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.
26. ^ Tacita Dean: 5 Americans, May 6 – July 1, 2012, Archived April 15, 2013, at archive.today ^{[ dead link ]} New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York.
27. ^ "Patty [Oldenberg] Mucha Archive | Granary Books". granarybooks.com. Archived from the original on May 10, 2020. Retrieved July 19, 2020.
28. ^ "Claes Oldenburg | Pat Reading in Bed, Lenox". whitney.org . Retrieved July xix, 2020.
29. ^ Nancy Princenthal, Hannah Wilke, Prestel Publishing, New York
30. ^ ^{a b} Ballad Kino (May fifteen, 2009), Going Softly Into a Parallel Universe The New York Times.
31. ^ "Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen: Biographies". OldenburgVanBruggen.com. Retrieved April 13, 2011.
32. ^ Michael Peppiatt (Apr 2005), The Art of Inspiration – Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen Engage the Unexpected in the Loire Valley Architectural Digest.
33. ^ Carol Vogel (March 17, 1995), Modernistic's Ex-Primary Joins Sotheby's The New York Times.
34. ^ Claes Oldenburg, Typewriter Eraser (1976) Christie's Mail service State of war with the Contemporary Evening Auction, April 20, 1969.

External links [edit]

• Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's website
• The Pace Gallery
• Claes Oldenburg at the Museum of Mod Fine art
• Oldenburg folio at the Guggenheim Museum site
• An anthology of Oldenburg'southward work, includes brief bio
• National Gallery of Art Claes Oldenburg: Making the Ordinary Boggling
• Pop Fine art Masters – Claes Oldenburg
• Biography of Claes Oldenburg
• Claes Oldenburg in the National Gallery of Australia's Kenneth Tyler collection
• An editorial of Oldenburg'due south work, highlighting five of his large-scale public sculptures

gaineydening.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claes_Oldenburg

Share this post