Philadelphia – Claes Oldenburg

 Posted by on June 24, 2011
Jun 242011
 
In Front of the City Center building downtown Philadelphia.

I am a huge fan of Claes Oldenburg.  Born in Stockholm, Sweden, the son of a Swedish diplomat stationed in New York. In 1936 his father was transferred to Chicago where Oldenburg grew up, attending the Latin School of Chicago. He studied at Yale University from 1946 to 1950, then returned to Chicago where he took classes at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Many of Oldenburg’s large-scale sculptures of mundane objects elicited public ridicule before being embraced as whimsical, insightful, and fun additions to public outdoor art.   Duchamp once said “concern with trying to redefine what we consider art was a very big factor in terms of my own work.” He put the concept of  the “ready-made” on the map.  I know that Oldenburg did not consider his work to be like Duchamp, but you must see a connection, as so much in life and art connects.

This second one is in the Sculpture Garden behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Cupid’s Span

 Posted by on January 22, 2000
Jan 222000
 
Embarcadero
Foot of Folsom Street
Cupids Span
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen
2002
This is the artists statement regarding this piece: “Inspired by San Francisco’s reputation as the home port of Eros, we began our project for a small park on the Embarcadero along San Francisco Bay by trying out the subject of Cupid’s stereotypical bow and arrow. The first sketches were made of the subject with the bowstring drawn back, poised on the feathers of the arrow, which pointed up to the sky.

When Coosje van Bruggen found this position too stiff and literal, she suggested turning the image upside down: the arrow and the central part of the bow could be buried in the ground, and the tail feathers, usually downplayed, would be the focus of attention. That way the image became metamorphic, looking like both a ship and a tightened version of a suspension bridge, which seemed to us the perfect accompaniment to the site. In addition, the object functioned as a frame for the highly scenic situation, enclosing — depending on where one stood — either the massed buildings of the city’s downtown or the wide vista over the water and the Bay Bridge toward the distant mountains.

As a counterpoint to romantic nostalgia, we evoked the mythological account of Eros shooting his arrow into the earth to make it fertile. The sculpture was placed on a hill, where one could imagine the arrow being sunk under the surface of plants and prairie grasses. By slanting the bow’s position, Coosje added a sense of acceleration to the Cupid’s Span. Seen from its “stern,” the bow-as-boat seems to be tacking on its course toward the white tower of the city’s Ferry Building. “

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