(1929 –)

· Pop Art; concept over form and reflected popular culture/icons.

· Swedish, moved to USA and raised in Chicago then moved to NYC

· Dealt with non-traditional subject matter (found objects): Metamorphosis of trash into fine art

· Involved in “Happenings” (1956 onwards)

Theatrical events with the use of homemade objects – performance art
Silent movement – no words or obvious plot

· Worked with Jim Dine with ‘street trash art’ from late 1950s

· Master draftsman – “to draw well is the ability to represent your imagination”

· His drawings brought out the beauty of everyday objects and their potential (such as his “fag ends” drawings)

· Coosje Van Bruggen was his collaborator (from 1979) and became his wife (she was often forgotten and ignored by critics)

· Oldenburg’s ‘soft sculpture’ (made from canvas, but later vinyl) came from happenings; he was inspired by the homemade props used and he often set them within a scene:

He set up “The Store” to display his sculptures in, it was set up like a shop and “Happenings” took place within it
The sculptures were made from plaster and paint and were often household, everyday objects to make art accessible
Recognisable objects that everyday people could purchase from “The Store”; not pretentious like a gallery.
Like Kinetic Art in the way they can be rearranged and moved so no two viewings are the same.
“A game of material and form” – like ‘fun’ art.
Organic form
Critics called them “one line jokes” and that they were short-lived

“Floor Cone” 1962

“Giant Hamburger” 1962

“Soft Toilet” 1966

· Created ‘urbanisation’ of art as his monumental sculpture become part of the landscape and accepted by t

he public; was about the

community more so that galleries and museums.

· There are themes of migration (he never felt part of the US), dysfunction (e.g. “Soft Toilet” 1966) and displacement (being out of place, e.g. the soft light switch) in his work (e.g.

“House Ball” 1993) as well as mass production and consumerism.

· His work conjured up the connotations of “What is Art?” and “Is there a place for humour in Art?”

· Critism of the large scale works of Oldenburg were that they were ‘polluting the landscape’ and meaningless.

Notable Works

“Lipstick (ascending) on caterpillar tracks” (1969-74)

· Monumental scale

· Commissioned by Yale University architecture students

· A feminine voice within his work that he later got from his wife

· The first version had a soft lipstick and hard case allowing the lipstick to be pumped up to inflate; phallic, sexual reference with humour.

· However, it wasn’t durable and Oldenburg made one where it was completely hard

“Split Button” (1981) and “Buried Bicycle” (1990)

Became part of the environment, they became owned and absorbed by urban communities as they became part of the landscape – as though they were naturally supposed to exist there.

“Split Button”

· 1981

· Found at the University of Pennsylvania opposite a sculpture of Benjamin Franklin

· Huge scale with a familiar object that would not usually be considered art

· Its four holes recall Philadelphia founder William Penn’s design for laying out the centre of the city around four symmetrically placed parks.

· Has become ‘owned’ by the public as it has become a meeting place and place for people to lounge – part of the community and landscape.

“Buried Bicycle”

· 1990

· Located in Paris

· Displacement (out of place)

· Inspiration from a novel by Samuel Beckett and the character of Molloy the anti-hero; who falls off his bicycle and finds himself lying in a ditch unable to recognize the object. Thus responding to the subject of ‘intervention’ commissioned for Parc de la Villette.

· The bicycle has close ties to France, having been invented there and celebrated in the Tour de France.

· Where Molloy's bicycle bell had been red, the Buried Bicycle's would be blue, in contrast to a number of red "follies" the architect had placed in the park.

· The bicycle is buried because: “We decided that the parts and details were better subjects for a configuration of sculptural elements than the unwieldy whole; our solution was to bury most of the vehicle.”

“House Ball” (1993)

· Migration and displacement themes are obvious in this piece; out of place (large scale) and migrating by packing the house away

· “The original “Houseball”, made for the performance Il Corso del Coltello, was based on the idea that one could gather all one's possessions in a large cloth and tie them up in the form of a ball that would roll -- thereby making any other transportation unnecessary -- to its next destination. The house was left behind; its contents became a house in itself. In Il Corso del Coltello, the “Houseball”, second only to the Knife Ship as a thematic object, was made up of the possessions of Georgia Sandbag, a character played by Coosje, and it accompanied her on a journey across the Alps. Later, Coosje came to see the “Houseball” as a symbol of displaced populations, the ordeal of refugees, and in 1993 she proposed a larger, permanent version of the sculpture for a site in Berlin, near what had been Checkpoint Charlie, the gate of entry in the Berlin Wall. The site was a traffic island, visible from all sides, in the midst of a new business complex. The “Housebal” was approved, but shortly after fabrication of the piece began, the site was returned to members of a family dispossessed during World War II who planned to put a building on it. Quite characteristically, the “Houseball” was again on the move.” - Oldenburg