Discovering Scale and the Artist Claes Oldenburg

Please read the short bio below and then view the video on the artist Claes Oldenburg.

The assignment for the week is embedded within the video.

Claes Oldenburg (born January 28, 1929) is 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 lives and works in New York.

“Because my work is naturally non-meaningful, the meaning found in it will remain doubtful and inconsistent—which is the way it should be,” he explained of his work. “All that I care about is that, like any startling piece of nature, it should be capable of stimulating meaning.” Born on January 28, 1929 in Stockholm, Sweden, his family moved to America in 1936. Oldenburg went on to study at Yale University before working at the City News Bureau in Chicago and attending the Art Institute of Chicago before moving to New York in 1953. His early shows featured objects assembled with images, papier mâché, and plaster. In 1957, Oldenburg created his first “soft sculpture,” Sausage, a free-hanging woman's stocking stuffed with newspaper. Thereafter, his work began to increase in scale, beginning with The Store (1961), an immersive installation created within a rented storefront in the Lower East Side where the artist sold food and store goods recast as plaster sculptures. By the 1970s, Oldenburg focused his attention on monumental outdoor public sculpture of everyday objects, going to create Free Stamp in Cleveland and Clothespin in Philadelphia. Oldenburg often collaborated with his wife, the artist Coosje van Bruggen, until her death in 2009. The artist continues to live and work in New York, NY. Today, his works are included in the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Tate Gallery in London, and the Kunstmuseum Basel, among others.