Claes Oldenburg Discovering the Human in American Culture

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Claes Oldenburg

• Discovering the Human in American Culture

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About the artist

• Born in Sweden in 1929, came to US as an child.
• 1956 - moved to New York City, met Allan Kaprow
• 1960s staged performance art "happenings which
  invite audience participation
• 60s became known as Pop artist but he preferred
  the term objective expressionism
• Zen Buddhism influence
• Since 1977 has collaborated with wife Coosje van
  Bruggen to make large scale public sculptures

Examples of Oldenburgs Happenings Stars in
which a waiter carries a tray of plastic food
and spills it over audience. Store Days which
combined theatre performance and real
transactions in a store
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The Store

• In 1961 OIdenburg turned his studio in Manhattan
  into a shop like environment.
• SUBJECTS
• Featured brightly-painted consumer items.
• MEDIA
• Muslin
• plaster,
• chicken wire.
• STYLE
• How would you describe the STYLE of these works?

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The Store 1961

• How did The Store challenge the art hierarchy?
• Why do you think it was influential for Pop
  artists?
• In what ways does this reflect the historical
  CONTEXT?

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The abstract expressionist element

• Oldenburg uses drips and splatters like the Ab-Ex
  painters
• However he sees them as an OBJECT rather as a
  carrier of meaning / sign of the artists mark
• Like Rauschenberg, feels his work is a result of
  a relationship between himself, an object and an
  event, i.e. gravity.

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Pastry case 1 (1961-62)

• Spot the desserts!
• Do you want to eat these?
• Why or why not?
• Materials enamel painted plaster sculptures
  built over a wire frame.

Appetising or repulsive?
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Oldenburg said
Claes Oldenburg, Pie à La Mode  1962 Museum of
Contemporary Art, LA. The Muslin soaked in
plaster over wire frame, painted with enamel

• I am for an art that takes its forms from the
  lines of life itself, that twists and extends and
  accumulates and spits and drips, and is as heavy
  and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life
  itself.

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Floor burger 1962

• Oldenburg said he made symbols of my time.
  What kinds of meanings do these symbols have?
• METAMORPHOSIS by changing scale
• Looking at this,what do you want to do?

Oldenburg a hamburger is a structural piece of
food. It is three circles. Plus if you count
the onion and pickle its got more. It is
structure with a textured surface.
FLOOR BURGER 1962 2m x Painted sail cloth
stuffed with foam
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Floor Cone Floor Cake (The Store, 1962)

• This Store was set up in the Green Gallery, NY.
• How do you think viewers would have responded to
  these works?
• What do all these objects have in common?
• http//smarthistory.org/claes-oldenburg.html
  (discussion of Floor Cake)

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Robert Hughes on Oldenburg

• American artists responded to the SIZE of modern
  life high rises, massive billboards, large food
  portions, huge cars, To be an American was to
  have too much most of the time. Following WWII
  they were one of the few wealthy nations.
• They represented a culture of GLUT
• The Store was a PARODY of an art gallery
• Oldenburg said, Almost all my art can be related
  to the human body, to the human experience.

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Soft machines 1963

• What is ironic about these sculptures?
• Do they seem mass produced?
• What links
• them to Pop
• Art?

Soft Type writer, 1963 Soft Pay-Telephone, 1963.
Vinyl filled with kapok, mounted on painted wood
panel, 46x 19 x 9. Guggenheim Museum.
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Objects impregnated with humanity

• Critics call his sculptures anthropomorphic

• Phallic imagery is common
• Advertising also exploits sexual associations of
  certain objects
• In what ways are humans and machines similar and
  different?
• Oldenburg art should be concerned with the
  vulgar, the proletarian, the ordinary, the
  tasteless but also instinctive or life-affirming

Four Soft Dormeyer Mixers 1965
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Giant Soft Fan 1966

• Gravity is my favourite creator
• What is ABSURD about this work?
• In what way does CHANCE play a role in this art
  work?
• How does this work show the idea of the artist
  collaborating with his materials?

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Soft toilet 1966

• Media Wood, vinyl, kapok, wire, plexiglass on
  metal stand and painted wood base
• Whitney Museum
• Identify 3 aspects of this work that make it
  typical of Oldenburg.

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Oldenburgs iconography

• American CONSUMER products e.g.
• junk food - hamburgers, ice cream
• cosmetics - toothpaste tubes, lip stick
• Home appliances - telephones, typewriters, fan
• The absurd a toilet
• What is art? Anything can be art!
• Element of KITSCH
• Things that are TRANSIENT ie. They do not last,
  part of a disposable culture
• Tap into basic HUMAN INSTINCTS e.g. hunger, sex
  appeal, aggression

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Lipstick, Ascending on Caterpillar Tracks (1969)

• What is the effect of combining the lipstick with
  a tank?
• What kind of symbol do they make?
• What makes this a typical Oldenburg work?

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Lipstick, Ascending

• The lipstick is adapted in size to the original
  dimensions of the tank
• Look like a lethal weapon
• Both objects linked by the power of aggression
  (lip stick sexual aggression)
• Mirror the dynamics of human movement

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GROUP ACTIVITY

• After analysing 5 key words, make a list of what
  you would consider the main stylistic
  characteristics of this artist.

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Stylistic characteristics

• Large scale sculptures
• Subjects are often everyday objects from American
  consumer culture
• However he makes the familiar unfamiliar by
• Transforming objects so viewers perceive them in
  different ways by changing the scale or
  changing the material
• May involve an interactive element
• Contain a human quality
• Contain elements of humour / absurd
• Early works bright colours, expressionist
  application of paint

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Geometric Mouse (Scale C, 1976)

• 5 versions in different sizes.
• Original idea came from mouse mask used in early
  60s
• Further developed form after visit Disney studios
• Parts can be positioned in many different ways
• What other associations come to your mind when
  you look at this sculpture?
• In what ways does this challenge the conventions
  of sculpture?

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Oldenburg on Geometric Mouse

• "Mickey Mouse, as form, is important in the
  American range of forms. The mouse's personality
  or nostalgia need not be discussed. The form may
  derive from the early film camera and that is how
  I arrived at this version wherein the 'eyes'
  operate as shutters, represented by old-fashioned
  window shades. Such shades never quite roll up,
  which accounts for the sleepy look."

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Giant Clothes pin (1976)

• Sculpture outside Philadelphia city hall
• Why is this work a visual pun?
• Oldenburg said, I am for an art that is
  erotical, mystical, that does something other
  than sit on its ass in a museum.

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Dropped Ice Cream Cone (2001)

• Collaboration with wife Dutch/American pop
  sculptor Coosje Van Bruggen
• In Cologne, Germany on top of a shopping centre
• Icecream cone - a symbol of an affluent society.
• However artists have reordered it so the cone is
  upside down, enormous melting and collapsing. ?
  suggests the excesses and vulgarity of life in
  the developed Western world?

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SummaryKey interests of the artist

• Making objects seem human
• Whimsical humour / Sense of the absurd
• Enjoyment of multiple meanings
• Metamorphosis showing things in flux, objects
  with changed shape / size
• Integrating art with everyday life
• Challenging the nature of art, and high art / low
  art divide.
• Perception. Making the familiar strange

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Oldenburgs aims cont..

• We are so used to seeing objects as commodities
  and even relate to ART this way. Oldenburg wants
  his art to interact with life itself, to do
  something other than sit on its ass in a
  museum.
• His works are not cold and impersonal.
• His method and materials shows the imprint of
  life and his emotion.
• What concerns does Oldenburg share with other Pop
  artists? In what ways is he different? (5 min
  brainstorm)

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Hamburger, Popsicle, Price (1962)
In pairs, come up with 3 main stylistic
differences between Oldenburgs work and Warhols
work (below). Explain how each image shows the
ideas of the artist.
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Lichtensteins Look Mickey v. Oldenburgs
Geometric Mouse
In pairs discuss SIMILIARITIES and DIFFERENCES
in the style of these works Explain the
DIFFERENCES by referring to the IDEAS of the
ARTIST