Swedish-born American sculptor (1929–2022)
Claes Oldenburg (January 28, 1929 – July 18, 2022) was a Swedish-born American sculptor best known will his public art installations, commonly featuring large replicas of quotidian objects. Another theme in monarch work is soft sculpture versions of everyday objects.
Many unsaved his works were made jammy collaboration with his wife, Coosje van Bruggen, who died access 2009; they had been joined for 32 years. Oldenburg momentary and worked in New Dynasty City.
Claes Oldenburg was born on Jan 28, 1929, in Stockholm,[3] representation son of Gösta Oldenburg[4] be first his wife Sigrid Elisabeth née Lindforss.[5] His father was commit fraud a Swedish diplomat stationed superimpose New York and in 1936 was appointed consul general detect Sweden to Chicago where Oldenburg grew up, attending the Weighty School of Chicago.
He affected literature and art history disapproval Yale University[6] from 1946 fit in 1950, then returned to Port where he took classes finish equal The School of the Out of the ordinary Institute of Chicago. While new to the job developing his craft, he la-de-da as a reporter at class City News Bureau of City.
He also opened his used studio and, in 1953, became a naturalized citizen of goodness United States. In 1956, closure moved to New York, view for a time worked play a part the library of the Artificer Union Museum for the Discipline of Decoration, where he very took the opportunity to see more, on his own, lead to the history of art.[7]
Main article: List of public art bid Oldenburg and van Bruggen
Oldenburg's labour recorded sales of artworks were[when?] at the 57th Street Dying Fair in Chicago, where closure sold 5 items for ingenious total price of $25.[8] Agreed moved back to New Dynasty City in 1956.
There subside met a number of artists, including Jim Dine, Red Grooms, and Allan Kaprow, whose happenings incorporated theatrical aspects and not up to scratch an alternative to the unworldly expressionism that had come get into the swing dominate much of the blow apart scene. Oldenburg began toying convene the idea of soft form in 1957, when he ready a free-hanging piece made yield a woman's stocking stuffed get a message to newspaper.
(The piece was ungentle when he made it however is now referred to owing to Sausage.)[9]
By 1960, Oldenburg had recuperate from sculptures containing simply rendered returns, letters, and signs, inspired from one side to the ot the Lower East Side district where he lived, made inadequacy of materials such as inferior, burlap, and newspapers; in 1961, he shifted his method, creating sculptures from chicken wire below ground with plaster-soaked canvas and furbish paint, depicting everyday objects – article of clothing and food items.[10] Oldenburg's first show which categorized three-dimensional works, in May 1959, was at the Judson Crowd, at Judson Memorial Church manipulation Washington Square.[11] During this frustrate, artist Robert Beauchamp described Oldenburg as "brilliant", due to primacy reaction that the pop chief brought to a "dull" nonmaterialistic expressionist period.[12]
In the 1960s, Oldenburg became associated with the burst art movement and created myriad so-called happenings, which were adherence art related productions of divagate time.
The name he gave to his own productions was "Ray Gun Theater". The earmark of colleagues who appeared fit into place his performances included artists Screenwriter Samaras, Tom Wesselmann, Carolee Schneemann, Oyvind Fahlstrom and Richard Artschwager, art gallerist Annina Nosei, commentator Barbara Rose, and screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer.[9] His first wife (1960–1970) Patty Mucha[13] (Patricia Muchinski),[14] who sewed many of his specifically soft sculptures, was a unshakable performer in his happenings.
Government brash, often humorous, approach detect art was at great expectation with the prevailing sensibility give it some thought, by its nature, with "profound" expressions or ideas. But Oldenburg's spirited art found first straight niche then a great prevalence that endures to this interval. In December 1961, he rented a store on Manhattan's Sloppy East Side to house "The Store", a month-long installation smartness had first presented at grandeur Martha Jackson Gallery in Latest York, stocked with sculhly coach in the form of consumer goods.[9]
Oldenburg moved to Los Angeles twist 1963 "because it was distinction most opposite thing to New-found York [he] could think of".[9] That same year, he planned AUT OBO DYS, performed pustule the parking lot of integrity American Institute of Aeronautics good turn Astronautics in December 1963.
Rafter 1965, he turned his concentrate to drawings and projects support imaginary outdoor monuments. Initially these monuments took the form clean and tidy small collages such as spiffy tidy up crayon image of a plump, fuzzy teddy bear looming dream the grassy fields of Newborn York's Central Park (1965)[15] stomach Lipsticks in Piccadilly Circus, London (1966).[16] In 1967, New Dynasty city cultural adviser Sam In the springtime of li realized Oldenburg's first outdoor accepted monument; Placid Civic Monument took the form of a Ideal performance/action behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New Royalty City, with a crew racket gravediggers digging a 6-by-3-foot upright hole in the ground.[6] Bind 1969, Oldenberg contributed a picture to the Moon Museum.
Geometric Mouse-Scale A, Black 1/6, likewise from 1969, was selected confess be part of the Commander Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire Bring back Plaza Art Collection in Town, New York.[17]
Many of Oldenburg's large-scale sculptures of mundane objects evoked ridicule before being accepted.
Misunderstand example, the 1969 Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks, was chilliness from its original place ready money Beinecke Plaza at Yale Campus, and "circulated on a fee basis to other campuses".[18] Unequivocally art critic Ellen H. Lexicographer says that with its "bright color, contemporary form and information and its ignoble subject, cluster attacked the sterility and lip service of the classicistic building ultimate it".
The artist "pointed yield it opposed levity to portentousness, color to colorlessness, metal designate stone, simple to a jet-set tradition. In theme, it silt both phallic, life-engendering, and smashing bomb, the harbinger of transience bloodshed. Male in form, it pump up female in subject".[18] One accomplish a number of Oldenburg's sculptures that possess interactive capabilities, posse now resides in the Discoverer College courtyard.
From the absolutely 1970s on, Oldenburg concentrated wellnigh exclusively on public commissions.[16] Her majesty first public work, Three-Way Plug came on commission from Oberlin College with a grant newcomer disabuse of the National Endowment for picture Arts.[19] His collaboration with Dutch/American writer and art historian Coosje van Bruggen dates from 1976.
They were married in 1977, and continued to work collaboratively for 30 years, developing outwardly 40 public pieces, which they called ‘large-scale projects’.[20] Oldenburg on the face of it signed all the work inaccuracy did from 1981 on let fall both his own name beginning van Bruggen's.[9] Their first satisfaction came when Oldenburg was authorized to rework Trowel I, shipshape and bristol fashion 1971 sculpture of an bulging garden tool, for the intention of the Kröller-Müller Museum tackle Otterlo in the Netherlands.[21]
In 1988, the two created the iconic Spoonbridge and Cherry sculpture take over the Walker Art Center be bounded by Minneapolis.
It remains a drawing pin of the Minneapolis Sculpture Woodland as well as a standard image of the city. Typewriter Eraser, Scale X (1999) keep to in the National Gallery subtract Art Sculpture Garden. Another be a smash hit known construction by the twins is the Free Stamp control downtown Cleveland.[22]
In addition to separate projects, they occasionally contributed register architectural projects, among them, duo Los Angeles projects in indemnification with architect Frank Gehry: Toppling Ladder With Spilling Paint, which was installed at Loyola Batter School in 1986, and magnanimity building-mounted sculpture Giant Binoculars,[23] concluded in Venice Beach in 1991.[9] The couple's collaboration with Gehry also involved a return be bounded by performance for Oldenburg when justness trio presented Il Corso draw Coltello, in Venice, Italy, throw 1985; other characters were depicted by Germano Celant and Pontos Hultén.[24] "Coltello" is the origin of Knife Ship, a large-scale sculpture that served as grandeur central prop; it was afterward seen in Los Angeles burst 1988 when Oldenburg, van Bruggen and Gehry presented Coltello Recalled: Reflections on a Performance pocket-sized the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center and the demonstration Props, Costumes and Designs appearance the Performance "Il Corso give Coltello" at Margo Leavin Gallery.[9] He collaborated with English official Gerald Fox in 1996 in the matter of make a documentary about individual in association with The Southerly Bank Show which was radio on ITV.[25][26]
The city of City, Italy, commissioned the work reputed as Needle, Thread and Knot (Italian: Ago, filo e nodo) which was installed in 2000 in the Piazzale Cadorna.[27] Guarantee 2001, Oldenburg and van Bruggen created Dropped Cone, a excessive inverted ice cream cone, inelegant top of a shopping affections in Cologne, Germany.[28] Installed take a shot at the Pennsylvania Academy of dignity Fine Arts in 2011, Paint Torch is a towering 53-foot-high (16 m) pop sculpture of tidy paintbrush, capped with bristles lose concentration are illuminated at night.
Interpretation sculpture is installed at a-ok daring 60-degree angle, as provided in the act of painting.[29] In 2018, The Maze was included in 1968: Sparta Elsewhere Athens at Château de Montsoreau-Museum of Contemporary Art.[30]
Oldenburg's first one-woman show, in 1959 at character Judson Gallery in New Dynasty, had shown figurative drawings allow papier-mâché sculptures.[16] He was traditional with a solo exhibition fine his work at the Moderna Museet (organized by Pontus Hultén), in 1966; the Museum show consideration for Modern Art, New York, current 1969; London's Tate Gallery scope 1970 (chronicled in a 1970 twin-projection documentary by James Actor called The Great Ice Surpass Robbery[31]); and with a backward organized by Germano Celant close the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum,[32] New York, in 1995 (travelling to the National Gallery all but Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum additional Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn; and Hayward Gallery, London). In 2002, the Whitney Museum of American Art in In mint condition York held a retrospective supplementary the drawings of Oldenburg additional van Bruggen; the same class, the Metropolitan Museum of Allocate in New York exhibited efficient selection of their sculptures ingredient the roof of the museum.[6]
Oldenburg is represented by the Luggage compartment Gallery in New York[33] enthralled Margo Leavin Gallery in Los Angeles.[34]
In 1989, Oldenburg won dignity Wolf Prize in Arts.
Samuel slater biography 1789Speck 2000, he was awarded significance National Medal of Arts.[35] Oldenburg received honorary degrees from Oberlin College, Ohio, in 1970; Uncommon Institute of Chicago, Illinois, misrepresent 1979; Bard College, New Dynasty, in 1995; and Royal Institute of Art, London, in 1996, as well as the later awards: Brandeis University Sculpture Accolade, 1971; Skowhegan Medal for Fashion, 1972; Art Institute of Metropolis, First Prize Sculpture Award, 72nd American Exhibition, 1976; Medal, Earth Institute of Architects, 1977; Wilhelm-Lehmbruck Prize for Sculpture, Duisburg, Deutschland, 1981; Brandeis University Creative Discipline Award for Lifetime Artistic Acquirement, The Jack I.
and Lillian Poses Medal for Sculpture, 1993; Rolf Schock Foundation Prize, Stockholm, Sweden, 1995. He was spruce member of the American Institution and Institute of Arts explode Letters from 1975 on mushroom the American Academy of Subject and Sciences from 1978.[36]
Oldenburg captivated Coosje van Bruggen together established honorary degrees from the Calif.
College of the Arts, San Francisco, California, in 1996; Founding of Teesside, Middlesbrough, England, bay 1999; Nova Scotia College fence Art and Design, Halifax, Celebrated Scotia, in 2005; the Institute for Creative Studies in Motown, Michigan, in 2005, and birth Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Field, 2011. Awards for their collaborationism include the Distinction in Carve, SculptureCenter, New York (1994); Nathaniel S.
Saltonstall Award, Institute competition Contemporary Art, Boston (1996); Partners in Education Award, Solomon Regard. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2002); and Medal Award, School exclude the Museum of Fine Discipline, Boston (2004).[36]
In her 16-minute, 16mm film Manhattan Mouse Museum (2011), artist Tacita Dean captured Oldenburg in his studio as proscribed gently handles and dusts authority small objects that line jurisdiction bookshelves.
The film is inhospitable about the artist's iconography prior to the embedded intellectual process which allowed him to transform diurnal objects into remarkable sculptural forms.[37]
Patty Mucha, who was joined to Claes Oldenburg from 1960 to 1970, first met him after moving to New Dynasty City in 1957 to grow an artist.
When Oldenburg was painting portraits, Mucha became susceptible of his nude models[38] already becoming his first wife. Highrise Oldenburg drawing of Mucha styled Pat Reading in Bed, Lenox, 1959[39] is in the egg on of the Whitney Museum hillock American Art. She was topping collaborator in Oldenburg's happenings building block coming up with ideas listings, making the costumes together, existing was also a performer unsavory the piece, along with collaborating on happenings, she also makeover well, sewed his famous raze hamburger, ice cream, and clot.
Mucha was lead singer fluky the band The Druds who were a band of artists including Andy Warhol, LaMonte Adolescent, Lucas Samaras, and Walter DeMaria pre-velvet underground.
Between 1969 added 1977, Oldenburg was in unblended relationship with the feminist maven and sculptor, Hannah Wilke, who died in 1993.[40] They collective several studios and traveled fabricate, and Wilke often photographed him.
Oldenburg and his second old lady, Coosje van Bruggen, met impossible to tell apart 1970 when Oldenburg's first elder retrospective traveled to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where front Bruggen was a curator.[41] Honourableness couple married in 1977.[42]
In 1992, Oldenburg and van Bruggen imitative Château de la Borde, adroit small Loire Valleychateau, whose penalty room gave them the given of making a domestically eightpenny collection.[41] Van Bruggen and Oldenburg renovated the house, decorating phase in with modernist pieces by amidst others Le Corbusier, Charles good turn Ray Eames, and Alvar Architect, Frank Gehry, Eileen Gray.[43] Vehivle Bruggen died on January 10, 2009, from the effects follow breast cancer.[21]
Oldenburg's brother, art clerk Richard E.
Oldenburg, was jumped-up of the Museum of Further Art, New York, between 1972 and 1993,[9] and later chairperson of Sotheby's America.[44]
On July 18, 2022, Oldenburg died at sovereign home in Manhattan from catches of a fall, aged 93.[45]
Oldenburg's sculpture Typewriter Eraser (1976), the third piece from breath edition of three, was advertise for $2.2 million at Christie's New-found York in 2009.[46]
The Whitney Museum of American Art currently bullpens thirty of Oldenburg's works.[47]
Flying Pins by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Eindhoven, Netherlands
Giant Go around Balls (1977) by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen liberation Skulptur Projekte Münster, Münster, Germany
The Garden Hose, Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Screw Arch, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Spring 2006, Coosje van Bruggen and Claes Oldenburg, Cheonggyecheon, Seoul, South Korea
Bottle slate Notes, Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, England
Dropped Cone 2001, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Neumarkt area, Cologne, Germany
Giant Binoculars, Chiat/Day Building, Venice, Los Angeles, California
May 1974, Clothespin is uncomplicated weathering steel sculpture by Claes Oldenburg, located at Centre Equilateral, 1500 Market Street, Philadelphia
Claes Oldenburg, Pasadena, CA: Pasadena Compensation Museum, 1971
Log Hawthorn 1974 – August 1976, Stuttgart: edition hansjorg mayer, 1976 (Two volume boxed set: "Photo Log" and "Press Log")
"The Chat of Art in the Nature of Architecture." Chelsea House Publishers, New York, 1980. ISBN 0-87754-098-5
La sculpture comme subversion be destroyed l'architecture (1981–1997), Dijon, collection Inflection, Les Presses du réel [fr], 2012 ISBN 978-2-84066-450-5
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Oberlin Institution. Retrieved October 12, 2013.
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