Claes Oldenburg was a Swedish-born American sculptor best known for his public art installations, typically featuring large replicas of everyday objects. Another theme in his work is soft sculpture versions of everyday objects. Many of his works were made in collaboration with his wife, Coosje van Bruggen, who died in 2009; they had been married for 32 years. Oldenburg lived and worked in New York City.
Paintings by Claes Oldenburg
Moon Museum (1969)
Moon Museum is a small ceramic wafer three-quarters by one-half inch (19 by 13 mm) in size, containing artworks by six prominent artists from the late 1960s. The artists with works in the "museum" are Robert Rauschenberg, David Novros, John Chamberlain, Claes Oldenburg, Forrest Myers and Andy Warhol.
This wafer was supposedly covertly attached to a leg of the Lunar Module Intrepid, and subsequently left on the Moon during Apollo 12. Moon Museum is considered the first Space Art object. While it is impossible to tell if Moon Museum is on the Moon without sending another mission to look, technicians have admitted to placing personal effects onto the Apollo landers, hidden in the layers of gold blankets that wrapped parts of the spacecraft which remained on the Moon after the astronauts departed.
Cupid's Span (2002)
Cupid's Span is an outdoor sculpture by married artists Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, installed along the Embarcadero in San Francisco, California, in the United States. The 70-foot (21 m) sculpture, commissioned by Gap Inc. founders Donald and Doris F. Fisher, depicts a partial bow and piece of an arrow.
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's Cupid's Span, made of fiberglass and steel, was installed in the newly built Rincon Park along the Embarcadero in San Francisco in 2002. The piece resembles Cupid's bow and arrow, drawn, with the arrow and bow partially implanted in the ground; the artists stated that the piece expressed their conception of San Francisco as "the home port of Eros," hence the stereotypical bow and arrow of Cupid. Leydier and Penwarden wrote, "Love's trade-mark weapon naturally evokes the city's permissive and romantic reputation, while formally its taut curve resonates wonderfully with the structure of the famous suspension bridge (the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge) in the background."
Inverted Collar and Tie (1994)
Inverted Collar and Tie is a sculpture designed in 1994 by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. It is located in Frankfurt's Westend in front of the Westend Tower. The DG Bank ordered the artwork in 1993. It was made in California.
Inverted Collar and Tie shows a huge collar of a shirt and a necktie that are mounted top down on a pedestal. The necktie spreads its ends upwards as if it is fluttering lightly in the wind. The pedestal is painted in dark grey, the necktie is coloured in light grey with dark stripes. The artwork's dimensions are 11.9 m × 8.5 m × 3.9 m (39 ft × 28 ft × 13 ft), and it weighs 7.5 metric tons. The sculpture is made from polymer concrete, steel and glass-reinforced plastic.
Mistos (1992)
Mistos (Match Cover or Matches) is the name given to a group of sculptures by artists Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen located in the La Vall d’Hebron neighborhood of Barcelona, Catalonia in Spain. The statue was unveiled in 1992 in anticipation for the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona and depicts several matches bending out of a matchbook, with several of the “burned” matches strewn about the nearby intersection. Like most of Oldenburg and van Bruggens’ works, the statues are made of painted steel and concrete.
By the late 1980s, Swedish-American artist Claes Oldenburg and his wife, Coosje van Bruggen, had made a name for themselves creating large replicas of household objects for public art installations across the globe. Pieces like Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks (1974) and Spoonbridge and Cherry (1988) helped them gain notoriety, and they were commissioned by Barcelona's Olympic Council to create a piece for the city, as the Summer Olympic Games were to be held there in 1992. Oldenburg and van Bruggen were invited to Barcelona in 1986 by the council, and the piece was subsequently commissioned.
Batcolumn (1977)
Batcolumn (or Bat Column) is a 101-foot-tall (31 m) outdoor sculpture in Chicago. Designed by Claes Oldenburg, it takes the shape of a baseball bat standing on its knob. It consists of gray-painted COR-TEN steel arranged into an open latticework structure.
Batcolumn stands outside the Harold Washington Social Security Administration Building at 600 West Madison Street near downtown Chicago. The United States General Services Administration commissioned the sculpture, which was dedicated in 1977. Oldenburg originally designed the sculpture to be painted red, but he abandoned that idea to distinguish it from Chicago's Flamingo sculpture by Alexander Calder. Oldenburg instead had Batcolumn painted gray, which he also hoped would make the sculpture easier to see against the sky. A plaque on the sculpture reads, "Oldenburg selected the baseball bat as an emblem of Chicago's ambition and vigor. The sculpture's verticality echoes the city's dramatic skyline, while its form and scale cleverly allude to more traditional civic monuments, such as obelisks and memorial columns."
Spoonbridge and Cherry (1988)
Spoonbridge and Cherry is a sculptural fountain designed by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. It was funded by a $500,000 donation from art collector Frederick R. Weisman and is permanently located in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The piece was completed and installed in 1988 for the Sculpture Garden's opening and consists of a large cherry resting atop a large spoon partially straddling a small pond.
In the mid-1980s, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, commissioned a piece of work from married couple Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, whose first artistic collaboration had come in 1976. The work, which had its $500,000 budget donated by art collector Frederick R. Weisman, was to be placed in the new outdoor Minneapolis Sculpture Garden across Vineland Place from the Walker on land owned by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board.
Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks (1969)
Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks is a weathering steel sculpture by Claes Oldenburg.
It is located at Morse College Courtyard, at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut.
Big Sweep (2006)
Big Sweep is a sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, installed in Denver, Colorado, United States. It depicts a broom and dustpan, and has been outside the Denver Art Museum since 2006.
According to Lonely Planet, the sculpture's color was selected "to complement Denver's clear blue skies" and the scale was "inspired by the vastness of Colorado's mountains and plains".
Geometric Mouse, Variation I, Scale A (1971)
Geometric Mouse, Variation I, Scale A is an abstract sculpture by Claes Oldenburg. created in 1971.
Examples are located at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Museum of Modern Art, and Walker Art Center.
Houseball (1996)
Skulptur 'Houseball' von Claes Oldenburg und Coosje van Bruggen auf dem Bethlehemkirchplatz in Berlin-Mitte. Blickrichtung Süd.
Flying Pins (2000)
Flying Pins in Eindhoven
Typewriter Eraser, Scale X (1999)
Typewriter Eraser, Scale X is a sculpture of a large-scale typewriter eraser by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.
Constructed in 1999, this model is located at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden.