Book Description
Pop artist Claes Oldenburg has long been one of the most popular American artists, and museumgoers worldwide are familiar with his soft sculptures of everyday objects. For the past four years, the Whitney Museum of American Art has been quietly acquiring his drawings, as well as those made with his wife and artistic partner, Coosje van Bruggen. Most major art museums have no more than 10 Oldenburg drawings in their holdings: the Whitney now has approximately 90-the largest such collection in the world. This assemblage of Oldenburg drawings is evidence of the museum's commitment to collecting in depth the work of great living American draftsmen. Published to accompany the largest exhibition to date of Oldenburg's drawings, this beautifully produced volume covers nearly a 40-year period, from 1959 to 1998, and features 92 full-color illustrations, with text and an interview with Oldenburg by Janie C. Lee, the Whitney Museum's Curator of Drawings.
Claes Oldenburg Drawings in the Whitney Museum of American Art FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Best known for recasting familiar objects in unfamiliar textures, media, and dimensions, Claes Oldenburg has long challenged his audience to rethink the everyday with works such as French Fries and Ketchup (1963) and Soft Toilet (1966). Oldenburg's masterful drawings reveal another facet of this pioneering artist, inviting viewers to enter his "fantasy' as they explore Oldenburg's relationship with the medium, from sensitive early explorations to veteran campaigns as a refined and accomplished draftsman." Drawing is crucial to Oldenburg's art: drawings note the beginning of an idea; they develop the thought; they give birth to his sculptures. The medium offers a flexibility particularly suited to the artist's extraordinary visions, enhancing the effectiveness of his manipulations of scale and perspective in sculpture. Pieces such as Proposed Colossal Monument for Central Park North, N.Y.C.- Teddy Bear (1965); Various Positions of a Giant Lipstick to Replace the Fountain of Eros, Piccadilly Circus, London (1966); Proposal for a Cathedral in the Form of a Colossal Faucet, Lake Union, Seattle (1972); and Blueberry Pie a la Mode, Sliding down a Hill (1996) usher viewers into a chimerical world of the mundane made significant.
Art & Photography
Book Info
