If you've ever grinned at a giant spoon balancing a cherry in Minneapolis, you've met the playful mind of Claes Oldenburg. The Swedish-born American artist, who died in 2022, spent decades insisting that the stuff of daily life deserved a spotlight. In a famous 1961 text called "I Am For…" he cheered for an art drawn straight from his surroundings. People often call it a manifesto, though Oldenburg himself said it wasn't one.
Starting in the 1970s, he kept returning to six subjects that he called his Six Themes: a geometric mouse inspired by a film projector, a three-way plug, cigarette butts, a clothespin, a typewriter eraser, and a baseball mitt with a ball. Each became a family of sketches, sculptures and soft prototypes stitched from canvas and stuffed like pillows. He believed a good subject should work at any size, whether it fits in your palm or soars a hundred feet tall.
- Spoonbridge and Cherry (1988), made with his wife Coosje van Bruggen, Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
- Clothespin (1976), a 45-foot steel giant in Philadelphia
- Typewriter Eraser, Scale X, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
- Big Sweep (2006), a broom and dustpan outside the Denver Art Museum
Part of the charm now is that some of these objects have quietly become relics. Few of us have held a typewriter eraser lately, so the shapes read almost like abstract sculpture. The series was first surveyed at the Walker Art Center in 1975, and a new Six Themes show at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York runs from November 5 to December 19, bringing rarely seen works out of the artist's estate.
Source: Colossal
