Contradiction animates Oldenburg’s sculptures of everyday objects. In works such as Soft Calendar, what is hard is made soft, what is small is made large, and what is flat is made three-dimensional. Stuffed fabric sculptures like this one originated in 1962 as props in Oldenburg’s art events, or Happenings, and evolved into independent works. The giant numbers here are sensuously rounded and pillow-like. Their overlapping arrangement asserts their volumetric nature. Each Sunday is called out in brilliant red, while the remaining days of the week are coated in white enamel.
Photographic documentation suggests that Soft Calendar was assembled and painted by Oldenburg and his partner, Patty Mucha, at Green Gallery in 1962.
Cleveland Historical, which has detailed numerous historical sites in the city, provides a detailed history of the sculpture. They also have an app to simplify exploring the city.
Below is a section from their website about Free Stamp–
…Commissioned by the Amoco Company in 1982, the Stamp was designed and fabricated in 1985. At the time, Amoco owned Sohio (Standard Oil of Ohio) and the building now known as 200 Public Square, and the piece was intended to reside in front of the building. But in 1986, before installation could happen, Amoco, Sohio and the building were acquired by BP America. The new owners refused to mount the sculpture—perhaps believing that “Free Stamp” was a metaphoric aspersion. Art historian Edward J. Olszewski has also noted that, in England, Pop Art is viewed more cynically and politically than in the United States, where it is considered primarily whimsical. Oldenburg is on record as saying that “free,” references the emancipation of American slaves during and after the Civil War—a plausible explanation given the piece’s planned proximity to the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument.
So instead of adorning Public Square, the Free Stamp was denied its freedom: imprisoned instead in a warehouse in Illinois. There it gathered dust for five years before then-mayor George Voinovich invited Oldenburg and van Bruggen to Cleveland in hopes of selecting another site.
It eventually was decided that the Stamp should be located in Willard Park on Lakeside Avenue just west of East 9th Street; and BP agreed to gift it to the city of Cleveland with all installation and maintenance expenses covered. However, disagreements arose about how the sculpture would be positioned. The original intent was for the Stamp to stand face down on Public Square. However, Cleveland city planners felt that this approach was not right for Willard Park and the Stamp ultimately was mounted angularly, with the faux-rubber “FREE” proudly visible. According to Oldenburg, it was as if “a giant hand picked up the Free Stamp and angrily hurled it several blocks to its current location at Willard Park.” Not surprisingly, the Stamp—formally dedicated on November 15, 1991—aims directly at 200 Public Square “It’s pointed on a diagonal to the 23rd floor, which were [BP’s] corporate offices,” notes Olszewski. “It leads the viewer back to the original site.”
Typewriter Eraser, Scale X, 1999, part of The ARIA Fine Art collection in Las Vegas
Artist Claes Oldenburg passed away this week at the age of 93. He was most famous for his large scale sculptures of everyday objects, many of which were produced with his wife Coosje van Bruggen, who passed away in 2009.
While primarily working in sculpture, early in his career in the 1960s he also created “happenings”- theatrical art related performances and collaborations with other artists in his circle. In 1985 he returned to performance and along with van Bruggen, architect Frank Gehry, and writer Germano Celant presented Il Corso del Coltello (The Course of the Knife) in Venice, Italy. In 2021, Pace Gallery in NYC, as part of the two gallery exhibition Claus & Coosje, showed work from this performance, pictured below.
From Pace’s website about the performance-
This ambitious event involved the creation and embarkation of a sea-worthy sculpture in the shape of a giant Swiss army knife. With oars protruding from its red-enameled hull as if from a Viking longship, the image of Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s Knife Ship sailing the Grand Canal has become iconic, while the massive kinetic sculpture was later shown in the rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and finally at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
With so much of Oldenburg’s work, the examination of the ordinary object engages the viewer with what they might previously taken for granted and gives them a chance to look again with new eyes. There is also something lighthearted and fun, as well as investigative, about his body of work.
(image via Whitney Museum’s website)
The Whitney Museum has a video showing the process of assembling his soft sculpture Giant BLT(Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato Sandwich) 1963, which involves putting the sandwich together piece by piece.
For more on Oldenburg, MoMA has a tribute that includes the words of people who knew him as well as his own. His 1961 artist statement is wonderful and worth reading in its entirety, here is the opening section-
I AM FOR
I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.
I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given the chance of having a starting point of zero.
I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap and still comes out on top.
I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary.
I am for all art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.
I am for an artist who vanishes, turning up in a white cap painting signs or hallways.
The Guardian’s obituary is also worth a read for more information on the artist’s history.
Ry Rocklen’s show Food Group: Genesis at Honor Fraser presents typical American foods and those that consume them from a new perspective. People in food costumes appear in small sculptures on paper plates, while in another room the food items appear large, reminiscent of the food sculptures of Claes Oldenburg.
Ry Rocklen’s sculptural practice is dedicated to the forms of the hyper familiar, an investigation of human subjectivity through the archetypal objects of our existence. Working with objects so familiar that they are committed to muscle memory and woven into our DNA, his artwork often aims to reclaim and exalt the individuality of the serialized object. For his exhibition with Honor Fraser, Rocklen will present Food Group: Genesis, an exploration of some of America’s favorite handheld foods through costume, 3D-printed sculpture, and video.
The iconic forms of tacos, burgers, pizza, and other fast foods served as inspiration for elaborate costumes that Rocklen rented from a Hollywood studio or fabricated himself. The artist and his collaborators were then scanned in the round wearing the costumes to create the source images, which were then 3D printed at the natural size of the foods they were wearing. The resulting collection of figurines form the core of Food Group: Genesis, an exhibition built around the simple concept of enlarging a familiar object with the purpose of shrinking it back to its natural size, a multiyear investigation by the artist.
In 2016, Ry Rocklen began production on Scale Model for the World’s Biggest T- Shirt, a T-shirt over 16 feet tall that was intended to be shrunken down to its normal size through a process similar to that used in the production of Food Group. After further consideration, the artist decided to also create a giant figure to wear the massive garment. He was then left with Mr. Pillowman, a giant made of pillows, after it had served its original purpose. As Rocklen continued his exploration of scale through Food Group, he came to think of Mr. Pillowman as the precursor to the Food Group endeavor and so it is included in the exhibition literally as the man behind the curtain.
At no point in the process of making the figurines are both the foodstuffs and the wearer their actual size, one is always enlarged while the other shrunken. They are simultaneously in and out of scale. The figurines are at once generic and intensely specific as they couple actual individuals with popular foods. They are devotional forms meant for devouring. They are both predator and prey, with an abundance of softening power.
Food Group can be a lens through which to view the world. The works are vehicles to explore issues of scale, media, form, desire, subjectivity, politics, and our environment. They are loci of delight, connection, guilt, and destruction. In the guise of ubiquitous foods, the costumes evoke an immediate relationship to the human body as it is affected by everything put into and on it, making food a means for sculpting oneself from within.
Día de Los Muertos at Hollywood Forever claims to be the biggest in the country. This year Lila Downs is headlining, and there will be dance performances, art shows and altars as well as food and drink all around the cemetery to celebrate ($20)- http://www.ladayofthedead.com/
Grand Ave Arts All Access has several events going on from 10am-5pm including a working orchestra rehearsal of LA Opera’s production of the new opera Moby-Dick, architectural tours of the Broad Museum, free entrance to MOCA and more- http://grandavearts.tumblr.com/
If you are downtown you can also attend the free Sixth Street Bridge Farewell Festival and Concert with performances by War, Aloe Blacc, and others and a fireworks show at the end to say goodbye to the iconic bridge that will soon be demolished- https://www.facebook.com/events/923096777770808/
Hammer Museum is having Hammer Bash to celebrate the opening of two new exhibitions of work by Frances Stark and Lawren Harris. DJs, drinks and food from 8-10 (free)- http://hammer.ucla.edu/hammerbash/
Saturday and Sunday
The Observatory in Santa Ana is hosting the awesome 2-day event Beach Goth 4– bands include The Growlers, Grimes, Die Antwoord, Juicy J, The Drums, FIDLAR, DIIV, Cherry Glazerr, Warpaint, and many, many, more ($100 for both days)- http://www.observatoryoc.com/events/beach-goth-4
LACMA is having a special screening of Claes Oldenburg’s “Possibly a Special on the Bag” which goes behind the making of his famous giant ice bag (free)-http://www.lacma.org/event/possibly-special-bag
Artist Frances Stark will discuss “the political subtext and artistry” of the film Casa de mi Padre starring Will Ferrell. He will be there along with the director, writer and producer “for a post-screening conversation about the distinctly unfunny
consequences of America’s appetite for drugs, including drug-related violence in Mexico”(free)- http://hammer.ucla.edu/programs-events/2015/10/casa-de-mi-padre/
