Claes oldenburg biography sculptures apple core

The books and articles below constitute a bibliography of the sources used in the writing of this page.

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

The piece also served as a counterweight to the Sol LeWitt Mural commissioned for the same space. The New York Times. By using "small subjects," as he said, "on a grand scale," the "real landscape" took on "imaginary dimensions."

1961-62

Pastry Case, I

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

This facilitated his development of a cartoon mouse, a symbol first explored in his early drawings, into which he incorporated the shape of a movie camera. The steel spring on the Clothespin appears as the number 76.

Oldenburg and van Bruggen were married for 32 years, until her death in 2009.

His younger brother, Richard, who died in 2018, spent 22 years as director of the Museum of Modern Art and later was chairman of Sotheby’s America. Claes Oldenburg was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2000 by President Bill Clinton.

Stake Hitch, a sculpture commissioned for a large exhibition vault within The Dallas Museum of Art, highlights the manner in which Oldenburg continued to challenge the perspective of the viewer and even some of the institutions that have commissioned his work. He also collected toys and kitsch objects that he displayed alongside these sculptures in installations.

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

Claes Oldenburg Captured a Carefree (and Consumerist) America. You could say Claes Oldenburg took big pretty literally here. From then on his work received significant acclaim, and for the next few years his production of "soft" convenience foods and domestic objects was prolific and varied: sandwiches, fries spilling out of the to-go packet, a hot water bottle, telephones and toilets, and other kitchen utensils and mass-manufactured household items.

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.

Latex - Whitney Museum of American Art