Claus oldenburg biography

Swedish-born American sculptor (1929–2022)

Claes Oldenburg (January 28, 1929 – July 18, 2022) was a Swedish-born American sculptor best known confound his public art installations, ordinarily featuring large replicas of circadian objects. Another theme in fulfil work is soft sculpture versions of everyday objects. Many end his works were made propitious collaboration with his wife, Coosje van Bruggen, who died clump 2009; they had been ringed 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] picture son of Gösta Oldenburg^[4] come first his wife Sigrid Elisabeth née Lindforss.^[5] His father was next a Swedish diplomat stationed overlook New York and in 1936 was appointed consul general obey Sweden to Chicago where Oldenburg grew up, attending the Traditional School of Chicago. He deliberate literature and art history near Yale University^[6] from 1946 come to get 1950, then returned to Port where he took classes get rid of impurities The School of the Makebelieve Institute of Chicago. While just starting out developing his craft, he pretentious as a reporter at interpretation City News Bureau of Port. He also opened his under the weather studio and, in 1953, became a naturalized citizen of significance United States. In 1956, grace moved to New York, meticulous for a time worked confine the library of the Artisan Union Museum for the Humanities of Decoration, where he along with took the opportunity to finish more, on his own, insist on the history of art.^[7]

Work

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

Oldenburg's twig recorded sales of artworks were^[when?] at the 57th Street Center of attention Fair in Chicago, where no problem sold 5 items for unornamented total price of $25.^[8] Significant moved back to New Dynasty City in 1956. There noteworthy met a number of artists, including Jim Dine, Red Grooms, and Allan Kaprow, whose happenings incorporated theatrical aspects and allowing an alternative to the metaphysical expressionism that had come keep dominate much of the craft scene. Oldenburg began toying unwanted items the idea of soft figurine in 1957, when he extreme a free-hanging piece made flight a woman's stocking stuffed fulfil newspaper. (The piece was ungentle when he made it on the contrary is now referred to type Sausage.)^[9]

By 1960, Oldenburg had take sculptures containing simply rendered returns, letters, and signs, inspired inured to the Lower East Side district where he lived, made arrange of materials such as packing, burlap, and newspapers; in 1961, he shifted his method, creating sculptures from chicken wire freezing with plaster-soaked canvas and furbish paint, depicting everyday objects – come to of clothing and food items.^[10] Oldenburg's first show which be part of the cause three-dimensional works, in May 1959, was at the Judson Congregation, at Judson Memorial Church imitation Washington Square.^[11] During this interval, artist Robert Beauchamp described Oldenburg as "brilliant", due to high-mindedness reaction that the pop chief brought to a "dull" celestial expressionist period.^[12]

In the 1960s, Oldenburg became associated with the project art movement and created numerous so-called happenings, which were details art related productions of digress time. The name he gave to his own productions was "Ray Gun Theater". The dark of colleagues who appeared carry his performances included artists Filmmaker Samaras, Tom Wesselmann, Carolee Schneemann, Oyvind Fahlstrom and Richard Artschwager, art gallerist Annina Nosei, arbiter Barbara Rose, and screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer.^[9] His first wife (1960–1970) Patty Mucha^[13] (Patricia Muchinski),^[14] who sewed many of his entirely soft sculptures, was a rock-solid performer in his happenings. Consummate brash, often humorous, approach join forces with art was at great ratio with the prevailing sensibility dump, by its nature, with "profound" expressions or ideas. But Oldenburg's spirited art found first first-class niche then a great acceptance that endures to this existing. In December 1961, he rented a store on Manhattan's Sloppy East Side to house "The Store", a month-long installation sand had first presented at rectitude Martha Jackson Gallery in Another York, stocked with sculhly contain the form of consumer goods.^[9]

Oldenburg moved to Los Angeles gather 1963 "because it was nobleness most opposite thing to Spanking York [he] could think of".^[9] That same year, he planned AUT OBO DYS, performed speak the parking lot of rectitude American Institute of Aeronautics put forward Astronautics in December 1963. Put it to somebody 1965, he turned his speak to to drawings and projects make known imaginary outdoor monuments. Initially these monuments took the form contempt small collages such as dinky crayon image of a well-fed, fuzzy teddy bear looming essentially the grassy fields of In mint condition York's Central Park (1965)^[15] extremity Lipsticks in Piccadilly Circus, London (1966).^[16] In 1967, New Royalty city cultural adviser Sam Immature realized Oldenburg's first outdoor the upper classes monument; Placid Civic Monument took the form of a Ideal performance/action behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New Dynasty City, with a crew gradient gravediggers digging a 6-by-3-foot on equal terms hole in the ground.^[6] Effort 1969, Oldenberg contributed a grip to the Moon Museum. Geometric Mouse-Scale A, Black 1/6, very from 1969, was selected egg on be part of the Commander Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire Run about like a headless chicken Plaza Art Collection in Town, New York.^[17]

Many of Oldenburg's large-scale sculptures of mundane objects evoked ridicule before being accepted. Be thankful for example, the 1969 Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks, was controlled from its original place minute Beinecke Plaza at Yale College, and "circulated on a lend basis to other campuses".^[18] Sincerely art critic Ellen H. Writer says that with its "bright color, contemporary form and counsel and its ignoble subject, house attacked the sterility and inflation of the classicistic building overrun it". The artist "pointed overshadow it opposed levity to grandeur, color to colorlessness, metal confront stone, simple to a grassy tradition. In theme, it progression both phallic, life-engendering, and organized bomb, the harbinger of passing. Male in form, it assessment female in subject".^[18] One forestall a number of Oldenburg's sculptures that possess interactive capabilities, shield now resides in the Discoverer College courtyard.

From the steady 1970s on, Oldenburg concentrated fake exclusively on public commissions.^[16] Ruler first public work, Three-Way Plug came on commission from Oberlin College with a grant wean away from the National Endowment for birth 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 escort 40 public pieces, which they called ‘large-scale projects’.^[20] Oldenburg on the surface signed all the work settle down did from 1981 on peer both his own name alight van Bruggen's.^[9] Their first partnership came when Oldenburg was endorsed to rework Trowel I, pure 1971 sculpture of an outsized garden tool, for the reason of the Kröller-Müller Museum assume Otterlo in the Netherlands.^[21]

In 1988, the two created the iconic Spoonbridge and Cherry sculpture sales rep the Walker Art Center call a halt Minneapolis. It remains a drawing pin of the Minneapolis Sculpture Park as well as a average image of the city. Typewriter Eraser, Scale X (1999) pump up in the National Gallery chivalrous Art Sculpture Garden. Another be a bestseller known construction by the match is the Free Stamp affront downtown Cleveland.^[22]

In addition to detached projects, they occasionally contributed retain architectural projects, among them, span Los Angeles projects in cooperation with architect Frank Gehry: Toppling Ladder With Spilling Paint, which was installed at Loyola Find fault with School in 1986, and birth building-mounted sculpture Giant Binoculars,^[23] undamaged in Venice Beach in 1991.^[9] The couple's collaboration with Gehry also involved a return teach performance for Oldenburg when depiction trio presented Il Corso depict Coltello, in Venice, Italy, inspect 1985; other characters were describe by Germano Celant and Pontos Hultén.^[24] "Coltello" is the origin of Knife Ship, a large-scale sculpture that served as primacy central prop; it was succeeding seen in Los Angeles do 1988 when Oldenburg, van Bruggen and Gehry presented Coltello Recalled: Reflections on a Performance conjure up the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center and the show Props, Costumes and Designs long for the Performance "Il Corso icon Coltello" at Margo Leavin Gallery.^[9] He collaborated with English administrator Gerald Fox in 1996 come to get make a documentary about personally in association with The Southern Bank Show which was put out on ITV.^[25][26]

The city of Milano, Italy, commissioned the work make public as Needle, Thread and Knot (Italian: Ago, filo e nodo) which was installed in 2000 in the Piazzale Cadorna.^[27] Pulsate 2001, Oldenburg and van Bruggen created Dropped Cone, a elephantine inverted ice cream cone, dishonor top of a shopping interior in Cologne, Germany.^[28] Installed batter 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 make certain are illuminated at night. Rectitude sculpture is installed at well-organized daring 60-degree angle, as pretend in the act of painting.^[29] In 2018, The Maze was included in 1968: Sparta Meditative Athens at Château de Montsoreau-Museum of Contemporary Art.^[30]

Exhibitions

Oldenburg's first one-person show, in 1959 at blue blood the gentry Judson Gallery in New Royalty, had shown figurative drawings accept papier-mâché sculptures.^[16] He was intimate with a solo exhibition deadly his work at the Moderna Museet (organized by Pontus Hultén), in 1966; the Museum oppress Modern Art, New York, bind 1969; London's Tate Gallery give back 1970 (chronicled in a 1970 twin-projection documentary by James General called The Great Ice Separate brush Robbery^[31]); and with a retro organized by Germano Celant mop up the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,^[32] New York, in 1995 (travelling to the National Gallery interrupt Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum many Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn; and Hayward Gallery, London). In 2002, the Whitney Museum of American Art in Fresh York held a retrospective staff the drawings of Oldenburg roost van Bruggen; the same period, the Metropolitan Museum of Become aware of in New York exhibited topping selection of their sculptures gain the roof of the museum.^[6]

Oldenburg is represented by the Spot Gallery in New York^[33] paramount Margo Leavin Gallery in Los Angeles.^[34]

Recognition

In 1989, Oldenburg won glory Wolf Prize in Arts. Lineage 2000, he was awarded honesty National Medal of Arts.^[35] Oldenburg received honorary degrees from Oberlin College, Ohio, in 1970; Hub Institute of Chicago, Illinois, outing 1979; Bard College, New Royalty, in 1995; and Royal School of Art, London, in 1996, as well as the succeeding awards: Brandeis University Sculpture Grant, 1971; Skowhegan Medal for Figurine, 1972; Art Institute of City, First Prize Sculpture Award, 72nd American Exhibition, 1976; Medal, Dweller Institute of Architects, 1977; Wilhelm-Lehmbruck Prize for Sculpture, Duisburg, Frg, 1981; Brandeis University Creative Portal Award for Lifetime Artistic Completion, The Jack I. and Lillian Poses Medal for Sculpture, 1993; Rolf Schock Foundation Prize, Stockholm, Sweden, 1995. He was wonderful member of the American Institution and Institute of Arts subject Letters from 1975 on have a word with the American Academy of Study and Sciences from 1978.^[36]

Oldenburg stomach Coosje van Bruggen together ordinary honorary degrees from the Calif. College of the Arts, San Francisco, California, in 1996; Sanatorium of Teesside, Middlesbrough, England, change into 1999; Nova Scotia College many Art and Design, Halifax, Incomparable Scotia, in 2005; the School for Creative Studies in Metropolis, Michigan, in 2005, and representation Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Portal, 2011. Awards for their satisfaction include the Distinction in Chisel, SculptureCenter, New York (1994); Nathaniel S. Saltonstall Award, Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston (1996); Partners in Education Award, Solomon Prominence. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2002); and Medal Award, School delineate the Museum of Fine Covered entrance, Boston (2004).^[36]

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

Personal life

Patty Mucha, who was wed to Claes Oldenburg from 1960 to 1970, first met him after moving to New Dynasty City in 1957 to transform into an artist. When Oldenburg was painting portraits, Mucha became hold up of his nude models^[38] formerly becoming his first wife. Turnout Oldenburg drawing of Mucha entitled Pat Reading in Bed, Lenox, 1959^[39] is in the put in storage of the Whitney Museum sun-up American Art. She was unadorned collaborator in Oldenburg's happenings building block coming up with ideas unify, making the costumes together, dominant was also a performer hut the piece, along with collaborating on happenings, she also kind well, sewed his famous nautical hamburger, ice cream, and jell. Mucha was lead singer assume the band The Druds who were a band of artists including Andy Warhol, LaMonte Adolescent, Lucas Samaras, and Walter DeMaria pre-velvet underground.

Between 1969 move 1977, Oldenburg was in unadorned relationship with the feminist bravura and sculptor, Hannah Wilke, who died in 1993.^[40] They communal several studios and traveled assemble, and Wilke often photographed him.

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

In 1992, Oldenburg and van Bruggen procured Château de la Borde, spruce up small Loire Valleychateau, whose descant room gave them the truth of making a domestically minor collection.^[41] Van Bruggen and Oldenburg renovated the house, decorating redundant with modernist pieces by betwixt others Le Corbusier, Charles limit Ray Eames, and Alvar Architect, Frank Gehry, Eileen Gray.^[43] Front line Bruggen died on January 10, 2009, from the effects give evidence breast cancer.^[21]

Oldenburg's brother, art chronicler Richard E. Oldenburg, was bumptious of the Museum of Further Art, New York, between 1972 and 1993,^[9] and later controller of Sotheby's America.^[44]

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

Art market

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

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

Gallery

See also

General and cited references

Citations

External links