Art Beat – Thinking Big with Claus Oldenburg

– By Mary Brennan Gerster –

Though you may not have known his name, if you’ve strolled through the resplendent sculpture gardens at PepsiCo in nearby Purchase, you’ve enjoyed the talent of Claus Oldenburg and his wife and artistic partner Coosje van Bruggen.

Trowel 11, the oversized garden tool created from unpainted Cor-Ten steel, has amused and puzzled visitors since its installation in the early 1970s. Unlike so many corporate art collections sold to satisfy shareholder demands, PepsiCo has retained this gift and the vision of Donald Kendall, its former president.

The Whitney Museum has pulled together a collection of the early sculpture, drawings and film of Oldenburg and van Bruggen (who passed away in January). While some of the early “Pop” pieces seem dated, the majority of the works are delightful, and the drawings will be new to most who know only the massive public sculptures.

At the opening of his show, I had the pleasure of listening to this ‘60s icon reflect upon his career and the art world. He felt that the early days in New York were the most exciting and that “by 1962, things had exhausted themselves”. His earliest soft sculptures came from props created for performances.

Factories were being developed to allow for the creation of large-scale projects, such as Lippincott in North Haven, Conn. He believes the opportunity to create sculpture of such size allowed him to compete with architecture. Works such as Torn Notebook (1996), from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, seem very connected to the rhythmic buildings of Frank Gehry.

He says, “I am for art that is put on and taken off like pants.” He feels that art that is successful deals with metamorphosis and “disrupts our expectation.” Certainly, when one comes across the massive Lipstick at Yale University or Trowel at PepsiCo, it makes us see again the objects that remain all-but-invisible to us each day. The “Pop” artist altered our view of the ordinary forever.

His early soft sculptures are grand Bean Bag Chair versions of sculpture, like the oversized Giant BLT (1963) or French Fries and Ketchup (1963). They are assembled from individual vinyl “fries” and “bacon” and could theoretically be rearranged at whim. One begins to think of other possible such sculptures, such as Hot Fudge Sundae, possibly installed beneath a painting of the same subject by Wayne Thiebaud. Or perhaps today’s trendy apple or chocolate martini replete with olive.

What I fell in love with, and had never previously seen, is a collection called, “The Music Room”. The couple put it together for a castle they bought in France. (They had visited Alexander Calder at his French castle and she wanted one of their own. As Oldenburg bemusedly noted, there was an abundance of castles for sale and in need of repair back then.) They purchased one in the Loire region and, in the remodeling, found that the room they loved best was the music room.

A pair of white latex Soft Clarinets (2000) was placed over the fireplace mantle like an ornate mirror. Standing Soft Clarinet (2001) in this gallery seems both flexible and yet frozen in its silence. No music played in this room and the almost mythical instruments are non-functioning. Yet one swears you can hear music as you walk around the gallery; the visual and auditory connection is that strong.

Soft French Horn Unwound (2002) hangs like a garden hose, with delicate tendrils of the tube creating lacey patterns. Sliced Stradivarius-Rose (2003), with five overlapping layers of violin in Nantucket Red canvas, is just wonderful. The strings are actual string tied in nautical knots. Falling Notes (2003), a beautiful wall sculpture, is brilliant whimsy, with the music sheet a Jackson Pollock spatter of black on white, covered by swirling, melted, delicate musical notes. The drawings for all of the Music Room pieces are delicate and lovely and demonstrate the journey from page to sculpture.

Included in the show is the last piece they worked on together, one of four large Tacks located outside Oslo, Norway.

Asked about the possibility of making sculptures from current artifacts such as cell phones, iPods and computers, Oldenburg said, “The tendency today is for objects to lose identity.” When his family came to America from Sweden in the 1930s, his mother compiled a book of objects popular in the country at that time. He said, “Objects communicate and lose form, everything tangible disappears.” His works are site specific and permanent.

“Oldenburg/van Bruggen” is at the Whitney through August. The Whitney Museum is located at Madison Avenue at 75th Street. It is closed Monday and Tuesday and open until 9 p.m on Fridays. Call 212-570-3600 or go to www.whitney.org.