{"id":19370,"date":"2022-07-19T18:15:45","date_gmt":"2022-07-19T18:15:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/claes-oldenburg-gave-me-a-place-to-meet\/"},"modified":"2022-07-19T18:15:45","modified_gmt":"2022-07-19T18:15:45","slug":"claes-oldenburg-gave-me-a-place-to-meet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/claes-oldenburg-gave-me-a-place-to-meet\/","title":{"rendered":"Claes Oldenburg Gave Me A Place To Meet"},"content":{"rendered":"
The headline was blasted atop the<\/em> Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>‘s metro section on November 3, 1975: Here Comes 4-Story Clothespin. \u201cA four-story high, almost Gothic-appearing clothespin, which the artist proclaims as an updated version of ‘The Kiss’,\u201d art critic Victoria Donohue wrote, \u201cis expected to become a new Philadelphia landmark within 18 months.\u201d <\/p>\n It was to be one of just many art pieces constructed at the new Center Square office complex, just across from City Hall. There was an art requirement, as it was being built on land purchased from the city. Developer Jack Wolgin, the former head of the city’s art commission himself, contacted artists great and small to fill the space. There was also supposed to also be a statue of a Philadelphia mummer, but that fell through, leaving Center Square to purchase the Mummer-like Milord la Chamarre<\/em> (My Lord of the Fancy Vest) by Jean Dubuffet.<\/p>\n The Fancy Vest Lord is still there, and so is clothespin<\/em>\u2014a silly, simple giant sculpture by Claes Oldenburg, who died yesterday at 93. His clothespin<\/em> was the best piece of public art in Philadelphia. It might be my favorite public art anywhere.<\/p>\n Oldenburg was born in Sweden and worked in New York City. He began with representations of his Lower East Side neighborhood in the early 1960s, inspired by all the hustle and grime and charm of the neighborhood. Later in the decade he was doing hippie performance art: A work titled Placid Civic Monument<\/em> featured gravediggers shoveling a 6-by-3-foot rectangular hole in the ground behind the Met. In 1969 he installed Lipstick (Ascending) on \u200b\u200bCaterpillar Tracks<\/em> at Yale University, a giant lipstick tube which became a place for anti-war protests. A Yale alumni mag story says the whole thing \u201cwas kept secret from the Yale authorities.\u201d<\/p>\n This was Oldenburg’s first major work, and just the sort of thing he’d become best known for. He called those giant versions of everyday objects \u201clarge scale projects.\u201d There are so many! Pool balls and a pick-axe and a toothbrush, in Germany. Binoculars in Venice, California. A needle and thread in Italy. A \u201cFREE\u201d stamp outside the free library in Cleveland. A flashlight at UNLV. Many of his works, like Umbrella<\/em> in Des Moines, Iowa, were done in collaboration with wife Coosje van Bruggen. They were married in 1977. She died in 2009. <\/p>\n There are several of Oldeburg’s works in Philadelphia. His most recent work is Paint Torch, a giant paintbrush complete with a poop-emoji daub of paint. That one’s OK. One of my favorites is Giant Three-Way Plug<\/em>which is behind the Art Museum here and also at Oberlin College.<\/p>\n