Claes Oldenburg's sculpture, in which ordinary objects are transformed by radical changes in scale and the use of unexpected materials, has become one of the most widely known bodies of contemporary art work. Oldenburg was one of a number of artists who reacted against Abstract Expressionism's domination of American art in the 1950s. In various ways, these artists returned to the representation of people and objects in their work. But, American artists of the early 1960s did not limit themselves to the subjects favored by older art traditions that had focused on illusionistic replication of the visual world. Instead, artists such as Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist took elements of popular culture--movies, billboards, magazines, commercial products--as their subjects. The new Pop Art responded to the commercialized environment that these artists observed around them. Oldenburg shared many interests and influences with the major Pop artists, but was less interested in the packaging and commercialization of America. Instead, his primary concern was with the "real" world, an "attachment [that] was so overwhelming as to force him to devise a new way to reintroduce it into art" (Geldzahler, 1985, p. 22). From his 1961 environment The Store, through his Happenings and his soft sculptures of hamburgers and hand-mixers, up to his monumental sculptures of clothespins and baseball bats, Oldenburg has consistently pursued this goal of reintroducing the everyday object into art. In doing so, he provides his audience with fresh views of the world and of art.
Oldenburg was born in Stockholm in 1929, and was raised in Chicago, where his father served as Sweden's Consul-General. He graduated from Yale University in 1950, and enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1952. Oldenburg worked for a short time as a lay-out man and illustrator, and then moved to New York in 1954. He was employed as a librarian at the Cooper ...