For Claes Oldenburg, art was always more about things than people. “I think there comes a point where you can choose between a person and things,” the artist once told the New York Times. “And I’ve made choices about things.” Even as a child, art museums were “a mystery” for him, he preferred to go to natural science museums.
“I’ve always been more interested in things than anything else.” And so Oldenburg became an artist of things. He built monumental sculptures in the form of spoons, cherries, lipsticks or garden hoses – and thus became world famous. Almost incidentally, he co-founded Pop Art, whose famous representatives such as Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein have now almost all died. Oldenburg has now died in New York at the age of 93.
Oldenburg was born in Stockholm in 1929. When he was seven, his father was posted to Chicago as the Swedish Consul General. Oldenburg fell in love with the country, its people and their lifestyle. After studying at the elite Yale University, he vagabonded a little across the continent before finally settling in New York in the 1950s.
Exactly at the right time: At the end of the fifties new ideas, new artists, new art were in demand. The main thing is different and as funny as possible. Creatives like Jackson Pollock had led the way, and others like Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Johns followed suit. Oldenburg also started. “I didn’t have a lot of money. I bought magazines, cut things out, and that was my first American statement, these collages.”
But Oldenburg didn’t remain small for long – and it became much more political: With a seven meter high lipstick on a tank chain, he campaigned against the war. A massive shredded pencil for the University of El Salvador in 1977 would symbolize the spirit’s survival despite brutal political repression. And in San Francisco he rammed a nearly 20 meter high Cupid’s arrow, complete with bow, into the ground.
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The art world received him enthusiastically – also in Germany. In Kassel, the multiple Documenta artist hewed a twelve meter high pickaxe into the Fulda riverbank. In Frankfurt it was almost as high a tie. In Münster billiard balls, in Cologne an ice cream cone and in Freiburg a water tap with a hose. Oldenburg has designed more than 40 monumental sculptures made of garishly painted plaster or soft vinyl. Many of them with his second wife, Coosje van Bruggen, who was always more than just a muse. Two weeks before Oldenburg’s 80th birthday, the Dutchwoman died of cancer in 2009 at the age of just 66.
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Oldenburg mourned – and continued working in his studio in the west of New York’s trendy SoHo district, had exhibitions – in Vienna’s mumok in 2012 a comprehensive personal exhibition was on display – albeit these days mostly with smaller new works, gets prizes. His health has been failing, especially after breaking his hip a few years ago. But he also fought against it with the help of a bicycle training device at home.
“I don’t get out that much anymore, but I have the feeling that the city is there when I want it,” he told the New York Times around his 90th birthday. “I like living in the studio. You see everything. And you can always change things the way you want them to be.”
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