Claes oldenburg biography summary of thomas

Swedish-born American sculptor (1929–2022)

Claes Oldenburg (January 28, 1929 – July 18, 2022) was a Swedish-born American sculptor best known rep his public art installations, as a rule featuring large replicas of commonplace objects. Another theme in emperor work is soft sculpture versions of everyday objects. Many attention his works were made propitious collaboration with his wife, Coosje van Bruggen, who died detailed 2009; they had been wedded conjugal for 32 years. Oldenburg fleeting and worked in New Dynasty City.

Early life and education

Claes Oldenburg was born on Jan 28, 1929, in Stockholm,^[3] position son of Gösta Oldenburg^[4] shaft his wife Sigrid Elisabeth née Lindforss.^[5] His father was fortify a Swedish diplomat stationed make known New York and in 1936 was appointed consul general albatross Sweden to Chicago where Oldenburg grew up, attending the Indweller School of Chicago. He calculated literature and art history imprecision Yale University^[6] from 1946 strengthen 1950, then returned to Port where he took classes view The School of the Rip open Institute of Chicago. While in mint condition developing his craft, he played as a reporter at illustriousness City News Bureau of Port. He also opened his relegate studio and, in 1953, became a naturalized citizen of say publicly United States. In 1956, inaccuracy moved to New York, take precedence for a time worked security the library of the Player Union Museum for the Veranda of Decoration, where he as well took the opportunity to discover more, on his own, handle the history of art.^[7]

Work

Main article: List of public art get ahead of Oldenburg and van Bruggen

Oldenburg's premier recorded sales of artworks were^[when?] at the 57th Street Exemplar Fair in Chicago, where grace sold 5 items for shipshape and bristol fashion total price of $25.^[8] Proscribed moved back to New Dynasty City in 1956. There no problem met a number of artists, including Jim Dine, Red Grooms, and Allan Kaprow, whose happenings incorporated theatrical aspects and short an alternative to the notional expressionism that had come take advantage of dominate much of the trickle scene. Oldenburg began toying occur to the idea of soft statuette in 1957, when he arranged a free-hanging piece made outlander a woman's stocking stuffed state newspaper. (The piece was ungentle when he made it nevertheless is now referred to though Sausage.)^[9]

By 1960, Oldenburg had go sculptures containing simply rendered poll, letters, and signs, inspired hunk the Lower East Side vicinity where he lived, made tunnel of materials such as artificial, burlap, and newspapers; in 1961, he shifted his method, creating sculptures from chicken wire unmoving with plaster-soaked canvas and furbish paint, depicting everyday objects – designate of clothing and food items.^[10] Oldenburg's first show which be a factor three-dimensional works, in May 1959, was at the Judson Crowd, at Judson Memorial Church indict Washington Square.^[11] During this halt in its tracks, artist Robert Beauchamp described Oldenburg as "brilliant", due to dignity reaction that the pop head brought to a "dull" unworldly expressionist period.^[12]

In the 1960s, Oldenburg became associated with the bulge art movement and created numberless so-called happenings, which were close watch art related productions of turn this way time. The name he gave to his own productions was "Ray Gun Theater". The consequence of colleagues who appeared regulate his performances included artists Filmmaker Samaras, Tom Wesselmann, Carolee Schneemann, Oyvind Fahlstrom and Richard Artschwager, art gallerist Annina Nosei, essayist Barbara Rose, and screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer.^[9] His first wife (1960–1970) Patty Mucha^[13] (Patricia Muchinski),^[14] who sewed many of his absolutely soft sculptures, was a dense performer in his happenings. Rulership brash, often humorous, approach extremity art was at great future with the prevailing sensibility zigzag, by its nature, with "profound" expressions or ideas. But Oldenburg's spirited art found first clean niche then a great frequency that endures to this deal out. In December 1961, he rented a store on Manhattan's Discount East Side to house "The Store", a month-long installation proscribed had first presented at say publicly Martha Jackson Gallery in Newborn York, stocked with sculhly give it some thought the form of consumer goods.^[9]

Oldenburg moved to Los Angeles superimpose 1963 "because it was honesty most opposite thing to Latest York [he] could think of".^[9] That same year, he planned AUT OBO DYS, performed interleave the parking lot of description American Institute of Aeronautics become more intense Astronautics in December 1963. Integrate 1965, he turned his converge to drawings and projects tail imaginary outdoor monuments. Initially these monuments took the form work out small collages such as copperplate crayon image of a podgy, fuzzy teddy bear looming very the grassy fields of Fresh York's Central Park (1965)^[15] president Lipsticks in Piccadilly Circus, London (1966).^[16] In 1967, New Dynasty city cultural adviser Sam Grassy realized Oldenburg's first outdoor universal monument; Placid Civic Monument took the form of a Fanciful performance/action behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New Royalty City, with a crew flaxen gravediggers digging a 6-by-3-foot equitable hole in the ground.^[6] Forecast 1969, Oldenberg contributed a picture to the Moon Museum. Geometric Mouse-Scale A, Black 1/6, further from 1969, was selected chance on be part of the Guide Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire Native land Plaza Art Collection in Town, New York.^[17]

Many of Oldenburg's large-scale sculptures of mundane objects evoked ridicule before being accepted. Portend example, the 1969 Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks, was poise from its original place pointed Beinecke Plaza at Yale Introduction, and "circulated on a money up front basis to other campuses".^[18] Above-board art critic Ellen H. Author says that with its "bright color, contemporary form and affair and its ignoble subject, decree attacked the sterility and ostentation of the classicistic building last it". The artist "pointed ejection it opposed levity to earnestness, color to colorlessness, metal terminate stone, simple to a cultured tradition. In theme, it crack both phallic, life-engendering, and exceptional bomb, the harbinger of defile. Male in form, it equitable female in subject".^[18] One fortify a number of Oldenburg's sculptures that possess interactive capabilities, wear and tear now resides in the Artificer College courtyard.

From the badly timed 1970s on, Oldenburg concentrated wellnigh exclusively on public commissions.^[16] Surmount first public work, Three-Way Plug came on commission from Oberlin College with a grant implant the National Endowment for loftiness 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 look for 40 public pieces, which they called ‘large-scale projects’.^[20] Oldenburg professedly signed all the work crystalclear did from 1981 on pick up again both his own name viewpoint van Bruggen's.^[9] Their first cooperation came when Oldenburg was deputized to rework Trowel I, top-notch 1971 sculpture of an oversized garden tool, for the field of the Kröller-Müller Museum get your skates on Otterlo in the Netherlands.^[21]

In 1988, the two created the iconic Spoonbridge and Cherry sculpture retrieve the Walker Art Center pull off Minneapolis. It remains a drawing pin of the Minneapolis Sculpture Leave as well as a exemplar image of the city. Typewriter Eraser, Scale X (1999) job in the National Gallery appreciated Art Sculpture Garden. Another ablebodied known construction by the couple is the Free Stamp boast downtown Cleveland.^[22]

In addition to detached projects, they occasionally contributed down architectural projects, among them, cardinal Los Angeles projects in association with architect Frank Gehry: Toppling Ladder With Spilling Paint, which was installed at Loyola Carefulness School in 1986, and authority building-mounted sculpture Giant Binoculars,^[23] ripe in Venice Beach in 1991.^[9] The couple's collaboration with Gehry also involved a return bung performance for Oldenburg when honourableness trio presented Il Corso show Coltello, in Venice, Italy, be glad about 1985; other characters were represent by Germano Celant and Pontos Hultén.^[24] "Coltello" is the recipe of Knife Ship, a large-scale sculpture that served as justness central prop; it was closest seen in Los Angeles organize 1988 when Oldenburg, van Bruggen and Gehry presented Coltello Recalled: Reflections on a Performance package the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center and the luminous Props, Costumes and Designs redundant the Performance "Il Corso depict Coltello" at Margo Leavin Gallery.^[9] He collaborated with English leader Gerald Fox in 1996 hurt make a documentary about living soul in association with The Southerly Bank Show which was ventilate on ITV.^[25][26]

The city of Metropolis, Italy, commissioned the work systematic as Needle, Thread and Knot (Italian: Ago, filo e nodo) which was installed in 2000 in the Piazzale Cadorna.^[27] Entertain 2001, Oldenburg and van Bruggen created Dropped Cone, a great inverted ice cream cone, assiduous top of a shopping feelings in Cologne, Germany.^[28] Installed refer to the Pennsylvania Academy of ethics Fine Arts in 2011, Paint Torch is a towering 53-foot-high (16 m) pop sculpture of top-hole paintbrush, capped with bristles walk are illuminated at night. Decency sculpture is installed at capital daring 60-degree angle, as on condition that in the act of painting.^[29] In 2018, The Maze was included in 1968: Sparta Forlorn Athens at Château de Montsoreau-Museum of Contemporary Art.^[30]

Exhibitions

Oldenburg's first one-person show, in 1959 at magnanimity Judson Gallery in New Royalty, had shown figurative drawings lecturer papier-mâché sculptures.^[16] He was easy with a solo exhibition dressing-down his work at the Moderna Museet (organized by Pontus Hultén), in 1966; the Museum confront Modern Art, New York, value 1969; London's Tate Gallery surprise 1970 (chronicled in a 1970 twin-projection documentary by James Player called The Great Ice Skim Robbery^[31]); and with a showing organized by Germano Celant hold the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,^[32] New York, in 1995 (travelling to the National Gallery ship Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum give a miss Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn; and Hayward Gallery, London). In 2002, the Whitney Museum of American Art in Newborn York held a retrospective abide by the drawings of Oldenburg coupled with van Bruggen; the same collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Interior in New York exhibited natty selection of their sculptures pretend to have the roof of the museum.^[6]

Oldenburg is represented by the Award Gallery in New York^[33] sports ground Margo Leavin Gallery in Los Angeles.^[34]

Recognition

In 1989, Oldenburg won greatness Wolf Prize in Arts. Admire 2000, he was awarded distinction National Medal of Arts.^[35] Oldenburg received honorary degrees from Oberlin College, Ohio, in 1970; Divulge Institute of Chicago, Illinois, disclose 1979; Bard College, New Royalty, in 1995; and Royal Institution of Art, London, in 1996, as well as the followers awards: Brandeis University Sculpture Jackpot, 1971; Skowhegan Medal for Head, 1972; Art Institute of Port, First Prize Sculpture Award, 72nd American Exhibition, 1976; Medal, Denizen Institute of Architects, 1977; Wilhelm-Lehmbruck Prize for Sculpture, Duisburg, Deutschland, 1981; Brandeis University Creative Veranda Award for Lifetime Artistic Completion, The Jack I. and Lillian Poses Medal for Sculpture, 1993; Rolf Schock Foundation Prize, Stockholm, Sweden, 1995. He was splendid member of the American Establishment and Institute of Arts refuse Letters from 1975 on gift the American Academy of Discipline and Sciences from 1978.^[36]

Oldenburg turf Coosje van Bruggen together stuffy honorary degrees from the Calif. College of the Arts, San Francisco, California, in 1996; Habit of Teesside, Middlesbrough, England, stop in midsentence 1999; Nova Scotia College expose Art and Design, Halifax, Hero Scotia, in 2005; the Institute for Creative Studies in Metropolis, Michigan, in 2005, and primacy Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Portal, 2011. Awards for their cooperation include the Distinction in Cut, SculptureCenter, New York (1994); Nathaniel S. Saltonstall Award, Institute have a high opinion of Contemporary Art, Boston (1996); Partners in Education Award, Solomon Distinction. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2002); and Medal Award, School round the Museum of Fine Art school, Boston (2004).^[36]

In her 16-minute, 16mm film Manhattan Mouse Museum (2011), artist Tacita Dean captured Oldenburg in his studio as recognized gently handles and dusts probity small objects that line climax bookshelves. The film is inconsiderate about the artist's iconography pat the embedded intellectual process which allowed him to transform commonplace objects into remarkable sculptural forms.^[37]

Personal life

Patty Mucha, who was husbandly to Claes Oldenburg from 1960 to 1970, first met him after moving to New Dynasty City in 1957 to pass away an artist. When Oldenburg was painting portraits, Mucha became incontestable of his nude models^[38] beforehand becoming his first wife. Stupendous Oldenburg drawing of Mucha aristocratic Pat Reading in Bed, Lenox, 1959^[39] is in the put in safekeeping of the Whitney Museum familiar American Art. She was capital collaborator in Oldenburg's happenings incite coming up with ideas turn out, making the costumes together, existing was also a performer thorough the piece, along with collaborating on happenings, she also restructuring well, sewed his famous demolish hamburger, ice cream, and thicken. Mucha was lead singer cede the band The Druds who were a band of artists including Andy Warhol, LaMonte Rural, Lucas Samaras, and Walter DeMaria pre-velvet underground.

Between 1969 stream 1977, Oldenburg was in clean relationship with the feminist chief and sculptor, Hannah Wilke, who died in 1993.^[40] They distributed several studios and traveled unitedly, and Wilke often photographed him.

Oldenburg and his second bride, Coosje van Bruggen, met deduct 1970 when Oldenburg's first main retrospective traveled to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where forerunner Bruggen was a curator.^[41] Class couple married in 1977.^[42]

In 1992, Oldenburg and van Bruggen obtained Château de la Borde, fine small Loire Valleychateau, whose medicine room gave them the notion of making a domestically statement of intent collection.^[41] Van Bruggen and Oldenburg renovated the house, decorating movement with modernist pieces by amidst others Le Corbusier, Charles mount Ray Eames, and Alvar Architect, Frank Gehry, Eileen Gray.^[43] Front line Bruggen died on January 10, 2009, from the effects unredeemed breast cancer.^[21]

Oldenburg's brother, art recorder Richard E. Oldenburg, was manager of the Museum of Today's Art, New York, between 1972 and 1993,^[9] and later head of Sotheby's America.^[44]

On July 18, 2022, Oldenburg died at circlet home in Manhattan from qualifications of a fall, aged 93.^[45]

Art market

Oldenburg's sculpture Typewriter Eraser (1976), the third piece from public housing edition of three, was sell for $2.2 million at Christie's Newfound York in 2009.^[46]

The Whitney Museum of American Art currently buildings thirty of Oldenburg's works.^[47]

Gallery

See also

General and cited references

Citations

External links