Claes Oldenburg

Study for Sculpture in the Form of an Inverted Q Above and Below Ground

1975

This sensuous and playful scene is characteristic of Oldenburg’s printmaking ouevre: a veritable heap of women displaying various expressions of ecstasy and repose. The loose sketches were drawn directly onto the plate by the artist, a master draftsman whose erotic etchings are largely unknown. The composition is based on the drawing: Clinical Study, Towards a Heroic-Erotic Monument in the Academic/Comic Style, 1965, ball-point pen on paper, 20 x 40 in. / 60 x 101.6 cm. *This print was etched in six gorgeous inks, each in an edition of ten: take your pick of color!* Oldenburg had an interest in imaginary monuments: he famously conceptualized works such as “Ball”, an unbuilt monument conceived of in 1967 which imagined two ballcocks – the round mechanism in a toilet tank...

This sensuous and playful scene is characteristic of Oldenburg’s printmaking ouevre: a veritable heap of women displaying various expressions of ecstasy and repose. The loose sketches were drawn directly onto the plate by the artist, a master draftsman whose erotic etchings are largely unknown. The composition is based on the drawing: Clinical Study, Towards a Heroic-Erotic Monument in the Academic/Comic Style...

This sensuous and playful scene is characteristic of Oldenburg’s printmaking ouevre: a woman peeks out from loops and knots of thick cord, a modern-day Laocoön and His Sons. She seem...

Ray gun is one of Oldenburg’s most iconic motifs, and the artist’s tongue-in-cheek alter ego. Oldenburg took the name from a weapon used in the show “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century ...

Claes Oldenberg (b.1929) is a Swedish-born American artist, renowned for his contribution to Pop art by way of his iconic soft sculptures and public installations. In 1962, Oldenburg debuted his revolutionary soft sculptures at the Green Gallery in New York. Three giant, squishy sculptures of an ice cream cone, a hamburger, and a slice of cake, swelled across the gallery floor, forever changing the way we define sculpture. It has been noted that Oldenburg's early work was largely inspired by Yayoi Kusama's hand-sewn phallic-shaped soft sculptures that enveloped the surfaces of ironing boards, sofas, and boats. Click here to see an exhibition poster featuring a later example of Kusama's soft sculptures. Ranging from voluminous hamburgers (famously on display at the AGO) to ballistic badminton shuttlecocks, Oldenberg's colossal sculptures replicate commonplace objects on a grand scale, often disrupting the environment they inhibit with curious and playful subtexts. The confrontational nature of Oldenberg's sculptures places an emphasis on the viewer, asking us to reconsider our relationship to these recognizable, but obscure, objects. "Geometric Mouse...

Paper Size: 37.5 x 24 inches ( 95.25 x 60.96 cm ) Image Size: 37.5 x 24 inches ( 95.25 x 60.96 cm ) Framed: No Condition: A-: Near Mint, very light signs of handling Additional Details: Offset lithograph in five colors on white, moderately thick, slightly textured paper. Edition of 1000. 100 copies signed and unnumbered, 900 copies unsigned and unnumbered. Published by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and the Massachusett's Institute of Technology, Cambridge. Published on the occasion of the one-man exhibition Claes Oldenburg: Six Themes at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and the Hayden Gallery...

Claes Oldenberg (1929-2022) is a Swedish-born American artist, renowned for his contribution to Pop art by way of his iconic soft sculptures and public installations. In 1962, Olden...

Artist: Claes Oldenburg Title: Notebook Torn in Half Medium: Lithograph Date: 1997 Edition: 97/97 Sheet Size: 25 1/2" x 22" Signature: Signed and numbered in pencil