Page 62 - Studio International - December1996

Claes Oldenburg

The Moderna Museet, Stockholm, recently accorded Claes Oldenburg
a major retrospective. Here a Swedish critic and a Swedish artist discuss
certain aspects of his work.

Robert Fraser Gallery is Two contrasting viewpoints the object belongs. Yet, faced by Oldenburg's 'soft'
showing recent work by objects—sewn, stuffed plastic pillows that can assume
Oldenburg until
December 31 Oldenburg's works indicate classes of physical objects; almost any shape—it would be unreasonable to argue that
clearly defined ideas. his precise characterizations— Typewriter, Toaster, Slice of
In this respect they remind one of concrete substantives. Cake, etc. —are based on a precise rendering of shapes.
(They always appear without syntactical nuances: Despite Oldenburg's richly varied technique and his
`Table' as in the dictionary, and not 'that particular ability to reshape himself to fit the requirements of each
table which...') new series of works, the result is always the same: a de-
A class is always both inclusive and exclusive, and there struction of the object's appearance in order to reveal the
may well be a larger difference between two included `Idea of the thing' —as Plato would have said. Take, for
objects than between one included and one excluded. A instance, the deformed furniture; a fact about deforma-
Renaissance dining-table, for instance, is very unlike a tion through perspective—which is what concerns us here
simple contemporary bed-side table, whereas the latter —is that it leaves the form of the object intact. (We do not
may be similar to a stool. Yet the stool is excluded from hesitate to assert that the edges of a road are parallel,
the class `Table'; it simply is not a table at all. even though they are drawn as two sides of a triangle.)
Oldenburg's remarkable ability to characterize an object Oldenburg's use of deformation does not disfigure the
is precisely the ability to point out exactly to which class object itself, i.e. 'outside' the picture.

Proposed colossal monument
for Ellis Island: Frankfurter
with Tomato, Hot Dog and
Toothpick
Crayon and watercolour
22 x 30 in.
Collection: Mr and Mrs
Michael Blankfort,
Los Angeles
326