Claes Oldenburg

Claes Oldenburg
Store Window - Yellow Shirt, Red Bow-Tie
1961
watercolor and crayon on paper
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Claes Oldenburg
Ice box
1963
watercolor and crayon on paper
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Claes Oldenburg
Study for a Soft Sculpture
in the form of a Giant Lipstick
1967
watercolor and crayon on paper
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Claes Oldenburg
Proposed Colossal Monument
for End of Navy Pier, Chicago - Bed Table Lamp
1967
watercolor and crayon on paper
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Claes Oldenburg
Giant Fireplug sited in Civic Center, Chicago
1968
watercolor and crayon on paper
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Claes Oldenburg
Fire-Plug Souvenir
(August - Chicago - 1968)
1968
painted plaster
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Claes Oldenburg
Typewriter Erasers - Position Studies
1970
watercolor and colored pencil on paper
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Claes Oldenburg
Self Portrait
1971
lithograph
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Claes Oldenburg
Hats - Vesuvius
1973
lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Claes Oldenburg
Typewriter Eraser as Tornado
1973
offset-lithograph (exhibition poster)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Claes Oldenburg
Colossal Eraser on Alcatraz Island
1976
lithograph
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Claes Oldenburg
Floating Three-Way Plug
1976
etching and aquatint
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Claes Oldenburg
Screw Arch Bridge
1981
aquatint, monotype and etching
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Claes Oldenburg
Proposal for a Civic Monument
in the Form of Two Windows
1982
lithograph
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Anonymous photographer for Leo Castelli Gallery
Claes Oldenburg and Leo Castelli
ca. 1985
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC

Claes Oldenburg
Soft Pencil Sharpener
1989
lithograph
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

An Abdication

First I looked at water. It was good.

Blue oblongs glinted from afar. From close

I saw it moving, hueless, clear

Down to a point past which nothing was clear

Or moving, and I had to close

My eyes. The water had done little good.

A second day I tried the trees. They stood

In a rich stupor, altogether

Rooted in the poor, the hard, the real.

But then my mind began to reel –

Elsewhere, smoother limbs would grow together.

How should the proffered apple be withstood?

One dusk upon my viewless throne

I realized the housecat's tyrant nature,

Let her features small and grave

Look past me as into their shallow grave.

No animal could keep me from a nature

Which existed to be overthrown.

Man at last, the little that I own

Is not long for this world. My cousin's eye

Lights on a rust-red, featherweight

Crown of thoughts. He seems to wait

For me to lift it from my brow (as I

Now do) and place it smartly on his own.  

– James Merrill (1969)