What material does Claes Oldenburg use? The Lower East Side neighborhood where Oldenburg lived inspired him to create sculptures containing simple figures, letters, and signs. He used materials such as cardboard, burlap, and newspapersto produce these sculptures.
What materials did Claes Oldenburg use in his sculptures?
The artist began creating soft sculptures of fabric, kapok (a soft material traditionally used as furniture stuffing) and foam rubber by the year 1962. Despite the fact that he wasn’t the first artist to make soft sculptures, he is surely the most closely associated. What media did Claes Oldenburg use? What did Claes Oldenburg make?
What is Claes Oldenburg known for?
Claes Oldenburg (born January 28, 1929) is an 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.
Why is Claes Oldenburg's clothespin so important?
Profoundly democratic in its overarching message, like the best of Oldenburg's work, Clothespin is no mere Pop witticism, but a celebration of the role of design in everyday life. Having ceased locking horns with Abstract Expressionism, Oldenburg's work after 1980 grew more abstract, conceptual and site-specific.
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What techniques did Claes Oldenburg use?
Whereas Pop artists had imitated the flat language of billboards, magazines, television, etc., working in two-dimensional mediums, Oldenburg's three-dimensional papier maches, plaster models, and soft fabric forms brought Pop art into the realm of sculpture, a key innovation at the time.
What type of art did Claes Oldenburg do?
Pop artModern artClaes Oldenburg/Periods
What did Claes Oldenburg make?
For some of his happenings Oldenburg created giant objects made of cloth stuffed with paper or rags. In 1962 he exhibited a version of his store in which there were huge canvas-covered, foam-rubber sculptures of an ice-cream cone, a hamburger, and a slice of cake.
How was the floor cake made?
For his seminal 1962 triptych Floor Cake, Floor Burger, and Floor Cone, Oldenburg enlisted the help of his first wife, Patti Mucha, who used a portable Singer sewing machine and heavyweight canvas to sew the covers of these large objects. Oldenburg then coated the objects' surfaces with paint.
How did Claes Oldenburg create his art?
By 1960, Oldenburg had produced sculptures containing simply rendered figures, letters, and signs, inspired by the Lower East Side neighborhood where he lived, made out of materials such as cardboard, burlap, and newspapers; in 1961, he shifted his method, creating sculptures from chicken wire covered with plaster- ...
What is the floor burger made of?
“Floor Burger” is an iconic soft sculpture. Sometimes referred to as “Giant Hamburger,” it was constructed by the legendary pop artist Claes Oldenburg in 1962. Made from painted canvas and stuffed with foam rubber and cardboard boxes, it is large enough to serve as a Poconos honeymoon bed.
What is the Bottle of Notes made of?
Situated in Middlesbrough Centre Square, outside Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA), the sculpture takes the form of a giant bottle, standing nine metres high – twice the height of a giraffe. The shape of the bottle is made from a continuous, off-white swirl of steel letters.
What is scale and how does Oldenburg use it in his sculptures?
By enlarging ordinary objects to enormous proportions, Oldenburg shrinks the viewers, reversing in this way the traditional relationship between the viewers and the observed objects. His oversized sculptures also possess a critical edge showing an insight on American culture and aiming at its absurdities.
Where did Oldenburg sell his art?
Main article: List of works by Oldenburg and van Bruggen. Oldenburg's first recorded sales of artworks were at the 57th Street Art Fair in Chicago, where he sold 5 items for a total price of $25. He moved back to New York City in 1956.
Where was Claes Oldenburg born?
Early life and education. Claes Oldenburg was born on January 28, 1929 in Stockholm, the son of Gösta Oldenburg and his wife Sigrid Elisabeth née Lindforss. His father was then a Swedish diplomat stationed in New York and in 1936 was appointed Consul General of Sweden to Chicago where Oldenburg grew up, attending the Latin School of Chicago.
Why did Oldenburg move to Los Angeles?
Oldenburg moved to Los Angeles in 1963 "because it was the most opposite thing to New York [he] could think of". That same year, he conceived AUT OBO DYS, performed in the parking lot of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in December 1963.
When did Oldenburg and Van Bruggen collaborate?
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. Oldenburg has officially signed all the work he has done since 1981 with both his own name and van Bruggen's.
Where is Oldenburg represented?
Oldenburg is represented by The Pace Gallery in New York and Margo Leavin Gallery in Los Angeles.
Where are Oldenburg and Van Bruggen's drawings?
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.
Who was Oldenburg's second wife?
Oldenburg and his second wife, Coosje van Bruggen, met in 1970 when Oldenburg's first major retrospective traveled to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where van Bruggen was a curator. They were married in 1977.
What medium did Oldenburg use?
Whereas Pop artists had imitated the flat language of billboards, magazines, television, etc., working in two-dimensional mediums, Oldenburg's three-dimensional papier maches, plaster models, and soft fabric forms brought Pop art into the realm of sculpture, a key innovation at the time.
What are Oldenburg's objects?
Oldenburg's objects, no matter how apparently insignificant in themselves, become expressive entities, almost like characters in a stage play. This is partly due to their dramatically outsized scale and partly due to the soft forms he chooses, like fabric or latex.
What is the art of Oldenburg?
Oldenburg introduced sculpture to Pop art , beginning with a series inspired by Duchamp's "readymades" and the bluntly prosaic subjects chosen by Pop artists like Warhol and Lichtenstein. Floor Cone, Floor Burger, and Floor Cake (shown here) were among the monumental structures based on comfort food fashioned by the artist in the early 1960s. A Surrealist element arises from the dramatic shift in scale. Floor Cake, a giant squishy triangle five feet high and nine-feet long, reverses the familiar relationship between this object and the spectator (it looks like it might eat us). More so than other Pop artists, Oldenburg drew inspiration from the process that comprised the items on which his art was based. Floor Cake, for instance, was assembled in layers, as one might make a cake, its soft medium and opaque, slightly splotchy paint mimics frosting, and finally, even though this element is invisible, empty ice cream cartons and foam rubber were used for the interior filling, giving metaphorical guts to the piece.
What is Surrealism in Oldenburg?
Surrealism - a persistent element in Oldenburg's compositions - persists in the faux-melting effect. While unapologetically representational, this form is powerful in presence, not merely an imitation of the thing it represents, but an independent, expressive form capable of expression, like the human body.
What is the magic of Oldenburg's sculpture?
Like portraits, but without the human figure, the magic of Oldenburg's sculpture is the expressive element he imparts to it. The most emotional (and hilarious) of the Pop artists, his brilliance is in the balance he strikes between irony and earnestness in his references to American culture. Artwork Images.
Is Oldenburg a clothespin?
No matter how ordinary his subjects may seem to be, for Oldenburg, a clothespin is never just a clothespin. The process of fine tuning and adjustment, typical of his approach to large-scale commissions, reflects an unwavering interest in the impact of form that aligns him with earlier masters in the tradition of sculpture, from Michelangelo to Brancusi.
Where was Claes Oldenburg born?
Claes Oldenburg was born on January 28, 1929 in Stockholm, the son of Gösta Oldenburg and his wife Sigrid Elisabeth née Lindforss. His father was then a Swedish diplomat stationed in New York and in 1936 was appointed Consul General of Sweden to Chicago where Oldenburg grew up, attending the Latin School of Chicago.
Who were the artists that were involved in the events of the Red Grooms?
There he met a number of artists, including Jim Dine , Red 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.
Overview
Work
Oldenburg's first recorded sales of artworks were at the 57th Street Art Fair in Chicago, where he sold 5 items for a total price of $25. He moved back to New York City in 1956. There he met a number of artists, including Jim Dine, Red 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 sculptur…
Early life and education
Claes Oldenburg was born on January 28, 1929, in Stockholm, the son of Gösta Oldenburg and his wife Sigrid Elisabeth née Lindforss. His father was then a Swedish diplomat stationed in New York and in 1936 was appointed consul general of Sweden to Chicago where Oldenburg grew up, attending the Latin School of Chicago. He studied literature and art history at Yale University from 1946 to 1950, then returned to Chicago where he took classes at The School of the Art Institute …
Exhibitions
Oldenburg's first one-man show, in 1959 at the Judson Gallery in New York, had shown figurative drawings and papier-mâché sculptures. He was honored with a solo exhibition of his work at the Moderna Museet (organized by Pontus Hultén), in 1966; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1969; London's Tate Gallery in 1970 (chronicled in a 1970 twin-projection documentary by James Scott called …
Recognition
In 1989, Oldenburg won the Wolf Prize in Arts. In 2000, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. Oldenburg received honorary degrees from Oberlin College, Ohio, in 1970; Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, in 1979; Bard College, New York, in 1995; and Royal College of Art, London, in 1996, as well as the following awards: Brandeis University Sculpture Award, 1971; Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture, 1972; Art Institute of Chicago, First Prize Sculpture Award, 72nd American Exhibition, …
Personal life
Patty Mucha, who was married to Claes Oldenburg from 1960 to 1970, first met him after moving to New York City in 1957 to become an artist. When Oldenburg was painting portraits, Mucha became one of his nude models before becoming his first wife. An Oldenburg drawing of Mucha titled Pat Reading in Bed, Lenox, 1959 is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. She was a c…
Art market
Oldenburg's sculpture Typewriter Eraser (1976), the third piece from an edition of three, was sold for $2.2 million at Christie's New York in 2009.
See also
• Cupid's Span, San Francisco