- Claes Oldenburg: An AnthologyBy Germano Celant, Claes Oldenburg
- Claes Oldenburg: the SixtiesBy Achim Hochdorfer, Benjamid H. D. Buchloch
- Claes Oldenburg, Coosje Van BruggenBy Germano Celant, Claes Oldengurg, Coosje Van Bruggen
- Claes Oldenburg (October Files)By Nadja Rottner
Important Art by Claes Oldenburg
Pastry Case, I (1961-62)
A plate of frosted cookies, two sundaes, a cake, an oversized rack of ribs, and a half-eaten caramel apple vie for our attention inside a display case. Roughly to scale, these unappetizing models of classic American diner fare reach out to us, rather like embarrassing relatives. 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.
Floor Cake (1962)
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.
Soft Toilet (1966)
By the mid-1960s, Oldenburg was leading a full-fledged rebellion against the non-figurative sculptural tradition of Abstract Expressionism. 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. Soft materials, like fabric, or in this case latex, prevent these forms from holding their shape. Soft Toilet slumps forward, as if it may spill its contents into the room. By placing a toilet on a pedestal, Soft Toilet is an obvious homage to Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (an upturned urinal presented as art in 1917). Like its infamous predecessor, it is a mundane feature of the modern home intended for private use as opposed to aesthetic contemplation. 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.
Influences and Connections
