Claes Oldenburg

I like how some of Oldenburg's work looks unbelievable , i like how he does big things and uses plastic (PVC ) as it puts this jokey look onto it. i also like hoe the spoon and the cherry look like this balance is not possible, 

In this postcard collage Oldenburg raised an everyday cosmetic item to a monumental scale. Made during his stay in London at the height of the ‘swinging sixties’, it embodies the popular, expendable, sexy imagery of Pop art. Oldenberg remarked: ‘For me, London inspired phallic imagery which went up and down with the tide - like mini-skirts and knees ... like the up-and-down motion of a lipstick’. To replace the Victorian statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus with lipsticks lifted from an advertisement was, therefore, to update one vision of sexuality with another.

April 2009

Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks, 1969-74

Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929; B.A. 1950)

Location: Morse College Courtyard

Swedish-born conceptual artist Claes Oldenburg began proposing large-scale sculptures of everyday objects in the 1960s in the spirit of Andy Warhol’s tongue-in-cheek pop art tributes to American consumer culture. Amidst nationwide free speech and antiwar protests, a group of Yale School of Architecture students and faculty, dubbing themselves the Colossal Keepsake Corporation of Connecticut, envisioned the creation of one of these monuments on campus as a revolutionary aesthetic and political statement. A rally celebrated the Lipstick’s first installation on Beinecke Plaza in 1969, where its aggressive presence disrupted the public space. Intended as a platform for public speakers, the sculpture was made of inexpensive materials: plywood tracks and a red vinyl balloon tip, meant to be inflated for visibility. Vandalism and deterioration led to the work’s removal; it was ultimately refurbished in cor-ten steel, aluminum, and fiberglass and installed at Morse College in 1974. Gift of the Colossal Keepsake Corporation, 1974