Claus oldenburg biography

Claes Oldenburg

Swedish-born American sculptor (1929–2022)

Claes Oldenburg (January 28, 1929 – July 18, 2022) was a Swedish-born American sculptor outrun known for his public art fitting, typically featuring large replicas of workaday objects. Another theme in his operate is soft sculpture versions of commonplace objects. Many of his works were made in collaboration with his helpmeet, Coosje van Bruggen, who died bind 2009; they had been married espouse 32 years. Oldenburg lived and stilted in New York City.

Early existence and education

Claes Oldenburg was born squeeze January 28, 1929, in Stockholm,[3] probity son of Gösta Oldenburg[4] and fillet wife Sigrid Elisabeth née Lindforss.[5] Circlet father was then a Swedish delegate stationed in New York and calculate 1936 was appointed consul general strain Sweden to Chicago where Oldenburg grew up, attending the Latin School aristocratic Chicago. He studied literature and smash to smithereens history at Yale University[6] from 1946 to 1950, then returned to Port where he took classes at Nobility School of the Art Institute accomplish Chicago. While further developing his art, he worked as a reporter surprise victory the City News Bureau of Port. He also opened his own workroom and, in 1953, became a alien citizen of the United States. Regulate 1956, he moved to New Royalty, and for a time worked hamper the library of the Cooper Wholeness accord Museum for the Arts of Embellishment, where he also took the open to learn more, on his relevant, about the history of art.[7]

Work

Main article: List of public art by Oldenburg and van Bruggen

Oldenburg's first recorded trading in demand of artworks were[when?] at the 57th Street Art Fair in Chicago, circle he sold 5 items for top-hole total price of $25.[8] He phony back to New York City addition 1956. There he met a circulation of artists, including Jim Dine, Protracted Grooms, and Allan Kaprow, whose happenings incorporated theatrical aspects and provided brush alternative to the abstract expressionism lose one\'s train of thought had come to dominate much a few the art scene. Oldenburg began flirtation with the idea of soft statue in 1957, when he completed spiffy tidy up free-hanging piece made from a woman's stocking stuffed with newspaper. (The livelihood was untitled when he made redden but is now referred to style Sausage.)[9]

By 1960, Oldenburg had produced sculptures containing simply rendered figures, letters, slab signs, inspired by the Lower Eastmost Side neighborhood where he lived, indebted out of materials such as wadding, burlap, and newspapers; in 1961, explicit shifted his method, creating sculptures plant chicken wire covered with plaster-soaked canvass and enamel paint, depicting everyday objects – articles of clothing and food items.[10] Oldenburg's first show which included whole works, in May 1959, was shock defeat the Judson Gallery, at Judson Church on Washington Square.[11] During that time, artist Robert Beauchamp described Oldenburg as "brilliant", due to the rejoinder that the pop artist brought pore over a "dull" abstract expressionist period.[12]

In character 1960s, Oldenburg became associated with nobility pop art movement and created haunt so-called happenings, which were performance sharp-witted related productions of that time. Righteousness name he gave to his sole productions was "Ray Gun Theater". Description cast of colleagues who appeared be grateful for his performances included artists Lucas Samaras, Tom Wesselmann, Carolee Schneemann, Oyvind Fahlstrom and Richard Artschwager, art gallerist Annina Nosei, critic Barbara Rose, and scriptwriter Rudy Wurlitzer.[9] His first wife (1960–1970) Patty Mucha[13] (Patricia Muchinski),[14] who seamed many of his early soft sculptures, was a constant performer in climax happenings. His brash, often humorous, form to art was at great disfavour with the prevailing sensibility that, fail to notice its nature, with "profound" expressions sustenance ideas. But Oldenburg's spirited art crank first a niche then a fair popularity that endures to this broad daylight. In December 1961, he rented tidy store on Manhattan's Lower East Do without to house "The Store", a month-long installation he had first presented lips the Martha Jackson Gallery in Original York, stocked with sculhly in greatness form of consumer goods.[9]

Oldenburg moved restriction Los Angeles in 1963 "because cabaret was the most opposite thing fully New York [he] could think of".[9] That same year, he conceived AUT OBO DYS, performed in the parking lot of the American Institute shambles Aeronautics and Astronautics in December 1963. In 1965, he turned his concentration to drawings and projects for fictitious outdoor monuments. Initially these monuments took the form of small collages specified as a crayon image of spruce up fat, fuzzy teddy bear looming overtake the grassy fields of New York's Central Park (1965)[15] and Lipsticks take on Piccadilly Circus, London (1966).[16] In 1967, New York city cultural adviser Sam Green realized Oldenburg's first outdoor usual monument; Placid Civic Monument took justness form of a Conceptual performance/action bottom the Metropolitan Museum of Art condensation New York City, with a multitude of gravediggers digging a 6-by-3-foot six-sided hole in the ground.[6] In 1969, Oldenberg contributed a drawing to decency Moon Museum. Geometric Mouse-Scale A, Swarthy 1/6, also from 1969, was designated to be part of the Master Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Manor Art Collection in Albany, New York.[17]

Many of Oldenburg's large-scale sculptures of routine objects elicited ridicule before being regular. For example, the 1969 Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks, was removed overrun its original place in Beinecke Cloister at Yale University, and "circulated frame a loan basis to other campuses".[18] English art critic Ellen H. Lexicologist says that with its "bright tinture, contemporary form and material and warmth ignoble subject, it attacked the ertility and pretentiousness of the classicistic belongings behind it". The artist "pointed obtain it opposed levity to solemnity, hue to colorlessness, metal to stone, undecorated to a sophisticated tradition. In subject, it is both phallic, life-engendering, station a bomb, the harbinger of humanity. Male in form, it is womanly in subject".[18] One of a circulation of Oldenburg's sculptures that possess joint capabilities, it now resides in primacy Morse College courtyard.

From the indeed 1970s on, Oldenburg concentrated almost chiefly on public commissions.[16] His first let slip work, Three-Way Plug came on snooze from Oberlin College with a bald-faced from the National Endowment for dignity Arts.[19] His collaboration with Dutch/American author and art historian Coosje van Bruggen dates from 1976. They were wed in 1977, and continued to check up collaboratively for 30 years, developing capsize 40 public pieces, which they alarmed ‘large-scale projects’.[20] Oldenburg officially signed please the work he did from 1981 on with both his own title and van Bruggen's.[9] Their first approtionment came when Oldenburg was commissioned fight back rework Trowel I, a 1971 chisel of an oversize garden tool, apply for the grounds of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo in the Netherlands.[21]

In 1988, the two created the iconic Spoonbridge and Cherry sculpture for the Footer Art Center in Minneapolis. It vestige a staple of the Minneapolis Statue Garden as well as a conventional image of the city. Typewriter Eraser, Scale X (1999) is in glory National Gallery of Art Sculpture Woodland. Another well known construction by integrity duo is the Free Stamp breach downtown Cleveland.[22]

In addition to freestanding projects, they occasionally contributed to architectural projects, among them, two Los Angeles projects in collaboration with architect Frank Gehry: Toppling Ladder With Spilling Paint, which was installed at Loyola Law Kindergarten in 1986, and the building-mounted figure Giant Binoculars,[23] completed in Venice Strand in 1991.[9] The couple's collaboration tally up Gehry also involved a return get closer performance for Oldenburg when the threesome presented Il Corso del Coltello, overcome Venice, Italy, in 1985; other noting were portrayed by Germano Celant title Pontus Hultén.[24] "Coltello" is the waterhole bore of Knife Ship, a large-scale chisel that served as the central prop; it was later seen in Los Angeles in 1988 when Oldenburg, machine Bruggen and Gehry presented Coltello Recalled: Reflections on a Performance at depiction Japanese American Cultural & Community Sentiment and the exhibition Props, Costumes dowel Designs for the Performance "Il Corso del Coltello" at Margo Leavin Gallery.[9] He collaborated with English director Gerald Fox in 1996 to make uncluttered documentary about himself in association reach The South Bank Show which was broadcast on ITV.[25][26]

The city of Metropolis, Italy, commissioned the work known since Needle, Thread and Knot (Italian: Break, filo e nodo) which was installed in 2000 in the Piazzale Cadorna.[27] In 2001, Oldenburg and van Bruggen created Dropped Cone, a huge bottom up ice cream cone, on top find time for a shopping center in Cologne, Germany.[28] Installed at the Pennsylvania Academy be successful the Fine Arts in 2011, Paint Torch is a towering 53-foot-high (16 m) pop sculpture of a paintbrush, capped with bristles that are illuminated bear out night. The sculpture is installed artificial a daring 60-degree angle, as allowing in the act of painting.[29] Strike home 2018, The Maze was included lure 1968: Sparta Dreaming Athens at Château de Montsoreau-Museum of Contemporary Art.[30]

Exhibitions

Oldenburg's principal one-man show, in 1959 at significance Judson Gallery in New York, abstruse shown figurative drawings and papier-mâché sculptures.[16] He was honored with a on one's own exhibition of his work at nobility Moderna Museet (organized by Pontus Hultén), in 1966; the Museum of Spanking Art, New York, in 1969; London's Tate Gallery in 1970 (chronicled keep a 1970 twin-projection documentary by Criminal Scott called The Great Ice Do better than Robbery[31]); and with a retrospective reorganized by Germano Celant at the Reasonable R. Guggenheim Museum,[32] New York, be pleased about 1995 (travelling to the National Congregation of Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum invite Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Kunst- offend Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn; person in charge Hayward Gallery, London). In 2002, goodness Whitney Museum of American Art shrub border New York held a retrospective give a rough idea the drawings of Oldenburg and forefront Bruggen; the same year, the Municipal Museum of Art in New Dynasty exhibited a selection of their sculptures on the roof of the museum.[6]

Oldenburg is represented by the Pace Listeners in New York[33] and Margo Leavin Gallery in Los Angeles.[34]

Recognition

In 1989, Oldenburg won the Wolf Prize in Veranda. In 2000, he was awarded greatness National Medal of Arts.[35] Oldenburg usual honorary degrees from Oberlin College, River, in 1970; Art Institute of City, Illinois, in 1979; Bard College, Spanking York, in 1995; and Royal Academy of Art, London, in 1996, brand well as the following awards: Brandeis University Sculpture Award, 1971; Skowhegan Award for Sculpture, 1972; Art Institute misplace Chicago, First Prize Sculpture Award, 72nd American Exhibition, 1976; Medal, American Institution of Architects, 1977; Wilhelm-Lehmbruck Prize edify Sculpture, Duisburg, Germany, 1981; Brandeis Installation Creative Arts Award for Lifetime Delicate Achievement, The Jack I. and Lillian Poses Medal for Sculpture, 1993; Rolf Schock Foundation Prize, Stockholm, Sweden, 1995. He was a member of authority American Academy and Institute of Discipline and Letters from 1975 on captain the American Academy of Arts leading Sciences from 1978.[36]

Oldenburg and Coosje front line Bruggen together received honorary degrees yield the California College of the School of dance, San Francisco, California, in 1996; Order of the day of Teesside, Middlesbrough, England, in 1999; Nova Scotia College of Art flourishing Design, Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 2005; the College for Creative Studies do Detroit, Michigan, in 2005, and depiction Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 2011. Awards for their collaboration include birth Distinction in Sculpture, SculptureCenter, New Royalty (1994); Nathaniel S. Saltonstall Award, College of Contemporary Art, Boston (1996); Partners in Education Award, Solomon R. Altruist Museum, New York (2002); and Medallion Award, School of the Museum exert a pull on Fine Arts, Boston (2004).[36]

In her 16-minute, 16mm film Manhattan Mouse Museum (2011), artist Tacita Dean captured Oldenburg grind his studio as he gently handles and dusts the small objects saunter line his bookshelves. The film denunciation less about the artist's iconography amaze the embedded intellectual process which legal him to transform everyday objects touch on remarkable sculptural forms.[37]

Personal life

Patty Mucha, who was married to Claes Oldenburg getaway 1960 to 1970, first met him after moving to New York Burgh in 1957 to become an maven. When Oldenburg was painting portraits, Mucha became one of his nude models[38] before becoming his first wife. Hoaxer Oldenburg drawing of Mucha titled Pat Reading in Bed, Lenox, 1959[39] admiration in the collection of the Inventor Museum of American Art. She was a collaborator in Oldenburg's happenings building block coming up with ideas together, manufacturing the costumes together, and was besides a performer in the piece, advance with collaborating on happenings, she besides as well, sewed his famous pound hamburger, ice cream, and cake. Mucha was lead singer in the cast The Druds who were a pin of artists including Andy Warhol, LaMonte Young, Lucas Samaras, and Walter DeMaria pre-velvet underground.

Between 1969 and 1977, Oldenburg was in a relationship tighten the feminist artist and sculptor, Hannah Wilke, who died in 1993.[40] They shared several studios and traveled count up, and Wilke often photographed him.

Oldenburg and his second wife, Coosje automobile Bruggen, met in 1970 when Oldenburg's first major retrospective traveled to picture Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where camper Bruggen was a curator.[41] The combine married in 1977.[42]

In 1992, Oldenburg give orders to van Bruggen acquired Château de dishearten Borde, a small Loire Valleychateau, whose music room gave them the concept of making a domestically sized collection.[41] Van Bruggen and Oldenburg renovated representation house, decorating it with modernist orts by among others Le Corbusier, Physicist and Ray Eames, and Alvar Architect, Frank Gehry, Eileen Gray.[43] Van Bruggen died on January 10, 2009, reject the effects of breast cancer.[21]

Oldenburg's relation, art historian Richard E. Oldenburg, was director of the Museum of Fresh Art, New York, between 1972 beginning 1993,[9] and later chairman of Sotheby's America.[44]

On July 18, 2022, Oldenburg on top form at his home in Manhattan free yourself of complications of a fall, aged 93.[45]

Art market

Oldenburg's sculpture Typewriter Eraser (1976), honourableness third piece from an edition shop three, was sold for $2.2 million catch Christie's New York in 2009.[46]

The Discoverer Museum of American Art currently shelter thirty of Oldenburg's works.[47]

Gallery

  • Flying Pins through Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Eindhoven, Netherlands

  • Giant Pool Balls (1977) surpass Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen for 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 of Notes, Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, England

  • Dropped Cone 2001, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje forefront Bruggen, Neumarkt area, Cologne, Germany

  • Giant Binoculars, Chiat/Day Building, Venice, Los Angeles, California

  • May 1974, Clothespin is a weathering steel sculpture hunk Claes Oldenburg, located at Centre Foursided, 1500 Market Street, Philadelphia

See also

General move cited references

  • Axsom, Richard H., Printed Stuff: Prints, Poster, and Ephemera by Claes Oldenburg A Catalogue Raisonne 1958–1996 (Hudson Hills Press: 1997) ISBN 1-55595-123-6
  • Busch, Julia M., A Decade of Sculpture: the Different Media in the 1960s (The Exit Alliance Press: Philadelphia; Associated University Presses: London, 1974) ISBN 0-87982-007-1
  • Gianelli, Ida and Beccaria, Marcella (editors) Claes Oldenburg Coosje machine Bruggen: Sculpture by the WayFundació Joan Miró 2007
  • Haskell, Barbara. Claes Oldenburg, Metropolis, CA: Pasadena Art Museum, 1971
  • Höchdorfer, Achim, Claes Oldenburg: The Sixties (Prestel: Unfeeling, 2012) ISBN 3-7913-5205-9
  • Johnson, Ellen H. Claes Oldenburg, Penguin Books, (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England; City, Maryland, US; Ringwood, Victoria, Australia), 1971
  • Oldenburg, Claes. Log May 1974 – Venerable 1976, Stuttgart: edition hansjorg mayer, 1976 (Two volume boxed set: "Photo Log" and "Press Log")
  • Oldenburg, Claes. Raw Notes: Documents and Scripts of the Performances: Stars, Moveyhouse, Massage, The Typewriter, clatter annotations by the author. (The Break down of the Nova Scotia College lay out Art and Design: Halifax, 2005) ISBN 0-919616-43-7
  • Thalacker, Donald W. "The Place of Rumour in the World of Architecture." Chelsea House Publishers, New York, 1980. ISBN 0-87754-098-5
  • Valentin, Eric, Claes Oldenburg, Coosje van Bruggen. Le grotesque contre le sacré, Town, collection Art et artistes, Gallimard, 2009. ISBN 978-2-07-078627-5
  • Valentin, Eric, Claes Oldenburg et Coosje van Bruggen. La sculpture comme overthrow de l'architecture (1981–1997), Dijon, collection Inflection, Les Presses du réel [fr], 2012 ISBN 978-2-84066-450-5

Citations

  1. ^James O. Young (2001). Art and Knowledge. New York: Routledge, p. 135.
  2. ^ ab"Claes Oldenburg obituary". The Guardian. July 18, 2022. Retrieved July 19, 2022.
  3. ^"Claes Oldenburg 1929 – 2022".
  4. ^"Gosta Oldenburg; Desolate Diplomat, 98". The New York Times. April 1, 1992. Retrieved April 29, 2014.
  5. ^"Biografía y obras: Oldenburg, Claes claes-oldenburg". Archived from the original on July 18, 2022.
  6. ^ abcClaes OldenburgArchived May 10, 2012, at the Wayback Machine Altruist Collection.
  7. ^"Claes Oldenburg." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998; later: Strong wind. Retrieved via Biography in Context database, October 22, 2017.
  8. ^David McCracken, "The Secede Fair That's Been In the See in the mind`s eye the Longest", Chicago Tribune, June 5, 1987, page 3
  9. ^ abcdefghMcKenna, Kristine (July 2, 1995). "Art : When Bigger Psychotherapy Better : Claes Oldenburg has spent leadership past 35 years blowing up be first redefining everyday objects, all in leadership name of getting art off secure pedestal". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved Apr 21, 2023.
  10. ^"Claes Oldenburg: On View, Apr 14 – Aug 5, 2013". Museum concede Modern Art. Sections "Introduction", The Street" and "The Store". Retrieved October 23, 2017.
  11. ^Claes Oldenburg, "Remembering Judson House," New York: Judson Memorial Church, p. 292
  12. ^Paul Writer (1975). "Oral history interview with Parliamentarian Beauchamp, 1975 Jan. 16". Oral legend interview. Archives of American Art. Retrieved June 30, 2011.
  13. ^"Six Feet of magnanimity 1960s and '70s: Patty Mucha—Once Wife. Olurg—on Her Archives and New Memoir". The New York Observer. January 16, 2012.
  14. ^"Guide to the The[sic] Patty Mucha Papers, 1949 – 2016 MSS.342". .
  15. ^Christopher Knight (August 6, 1995), The Percolating Mind of Oldenburg : A retrospective shows how ideas from early in unmixed career can cook for decades, earlier emerging to enshrine the mundaneLos Angeles Times.
  16. ^ abcClaes OldenburgMuseum of Modern Fill, New York.
  17. ^"Explore The Art Collection". Visit the Empire State Plaza & New-found York State Capitol.
  18. ^ abJohnson, Ellen Pirouette. (1971). Claes Oldenburg. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books. p. 46.
  19. ^Duffes, Melissa. "Oldenburg's Primary Commissioned Public Sculpture Returns to AMAM". Oberlin College. Retrieved October 12, 2013.
  20. ^HENI Talks (December 13, 2024). Claes Oldenburg's Bottle of Notes | HENI Talks. Retrieved December 20, 2024 – close to YouTube.
  21. ^ abKino, Carol (January 13, 2009). "Coosje van Bruggen, Sculptor, Dies scorn 66". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 21, 2023.
  22. ^Roy, Chris; Edmonds, Joe. "The Free Stamp". Cleveland Historical. Retrieved August 10, 2020.
  23. ^"Binoculars". Claus Carver and Coosje VanBruggen. Retrieved October 1, 2023.
  24. ^Claes Oldenburg: Props, Costumes and Designs for the Performance "Il Corso describe Coltello", January 9 – February 13, 1988 Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles.
  25. ^"Claes Oldenburg (1996)". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on April 21, 2023. Retrieved April 21, 2023.
  26. ^The Southern Bank Show: Claes Oldenburg (1996) - Gérald Fox | Synopsis, Characteristics, Moods, Themes and Related | AllMovie, retrieved April 21, 2023
  27. ^"Needle, Thread and Bind in Piazzale Cadorna". in-Lombardia: The Well-founded Tourism Information Site for Lombardy. June 14, 2021. Retrieved July 19, 2022.
  28. ^"Dropped Cone". Retrieved April 29, 2014.
  29. ^"Oldenburg's Crayon Torch | 1805". Retrieved April 29, 2014.
  30. ^Sevior, Michelle (November 7, 2018). "ArtPremium – 1968 – Sparta Dreaming Town at Château de Montsoreau-Museum Contemporary Art". ArtPremium. Archived from the original expertise August 10, 2019. Retrieved August 10, 2019.
  31. ^"Double vision: the joys of twin-projection cinema". British Film Institute. April 19, 2013. Retrieved December 1, 2015.
  32. ^Russell, Crapper (March 6, 1995). "ART REVIEW; Oldenburg Again: Whimsy and Latent Humanity". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved Apr 21, 2023.
  33. ^"Remembering Claes Oldenburg". Pace Gallery. December 18, 2021. Retrieved July 19, 2022.
  34. ^"Margo Leavin Gallery – Institution". ArtFacts. Retrieved July 19, 2022.
  35. ^Lifetime Honors – National Medal of ArtsArchived March 4, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  36. ^ abOldenburg BiographyPennsylvania Academy of the Fine Study, Philadelphia.
  37. ^"Tacita Dean: Five Americans". . Retrieved April 21, 2023.
  38. ^"Patty [Oldenberg] Mucha Recount | Granary Books". . Archived hold up the original on May 10, 2020. Retrieved July 19, 2020.
  39. ^"Claes Oldenburg | Pat Reading in Bed, Lenox". Whitney Museum of American Art. Retrieved July 19, 2020.
  40. ^Nancy Princenthal, Hannah Wilke, Prestel Publishing, New York
  41. ^ abKino, Carol (May 15, 2009). "Going Softly Into dinky Parallel Universe". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 21, 2023.
  42. ^"Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen: Biographies". Retrieved April 13, 2011.
  43. ^Michael Peppiatt (April 2005), The Art of Inspiration – Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen Consider the Unexpected in the Loire ValleyArchitectural Digest.
  44. ^Vogel, Carol (March 17, 1995). "Modern's Ex-Chief Joins Sotheby's". The New Royalty Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 21, 2023.
  45. ^Bernstein, Fred (July 18, 2022). "Claes Oldenburg, a whimsical father of pop split up, dies at 93". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 18, 2022.
  46. ^Claes Oldenburg, Typewriter Eraser (1976)Christie's Post War with excellence Contemporary Evening Sale, April 20, 1969.
  47. ^"Claes Oldenburg". Whitney Museum of American Art. Retrieved June 2, 2023.

External links