Saturday, August 14

Claes Oldenburg's objects

I think that many people look at the left Oldenburg's sculpture and asks themselves if it's a creation of the artist because it doesn't look like any familiar object in a large scale that characterizes the artist work.
It is a typewriter eraser. The round part was made of rubber, the eraser and at the other end the brush that took away the dust after erasing.
At the left side a stamp made of rubber that is seldom seen nowadays with the word "Free".
This is what Claes tells about his objects:
"We do invest religious emotion in our objects. Look at how beautifully objects are depicted in ads on Sunday newspapers. It's all very emotional. Objects are body images, after all, created by humans, filled with human emotion, objects of worship."*
Enchantment is the word that comes to my mind when I watch Oldenburg's work. There are many of his objects and I plan to publish some others.
* (C. Oldenburg, quoted in M. Rosenthal, "Unbridled Monuments; or, How Claes Oldenburg Set Out to Change the World," Claes Oldenburg: An Anthology, New York, 1995, p. 259)