Soon opening at the Whitney

THE WHITNEY TO PRESENT SELECTION OF EARLY SCULPTURES AND
DRAWINGS BY OLDENBURG, FILMS OF HIS EARLY HAPPENINGS, AND
A SERIES OF WORKS BY OLDENBURG AND VAN BRUGGEN
Claes Oldenburg: Early Sculpture, Drawings, and Happenings Films
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen: The Music Room
Opens May 7, 2009
Press Preview: Wednesday, May 6, 10am-noon
NEW YORK, April 6, 2009 – This spring, the Whitney Museum of American Art presents a
selection of early sculpture and drawings by Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929), as well as films of
the artist’s influential Happenings, together with The Music Room, a series of works that
Oldenburg made with his wife and artistic collaborator Coosje van Bruggen (1942-2009).
The presentation opens on May 7, 2009, and runs through August in the second-floor
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street
New York, NY 10021
whitney.org/press
Tel. (212) 570-3633
Fax (212) 570-4169
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Press Release
Contact:
Whitney Museum of American Art
Stephen Soba, Leily Soleimani
212-570-3633
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Mildred & Herbert Lee Galleries; the films are shown projected in loops on the walls of the
Kaufman Astoria Studios Film & Video Gallery, also on the Museum’s second floor. Three
Whitney curators – Carter Foster, Chrissie Iles, and Dana Miller – are organizing the
presentation.
One of the most innovative artists of the postwar period, Claes Oldenburg is best known for
sculptures and drawings that disrupt our expectations of how ordinary objects “behave.” In
1976, he began an extraordinary creative partnership with the art historian and curator
Coosje van Bruggen that continued for more than thirty years. The Whitney has championed
their work for several decades and now possesses one of the world’s largest collections.
Drawn primarily from the museum’s extensive holdings of drawings, sculpture, film, and
archival material, this presentation is concentrated around several distinct projects, but
illuminates the larger themes of metamorphosis and artistic collaboration that are at the
heart of their practice.
Claes Oldenburg: Early Sculpture, Drawings, and Happenings Films
From the start, Oldenburg took an innovative approach to the media he used as well as to
the processes of art-making and distribution. In 1961, he opened The Store, a nowlegendary
event, in which the act of selling objects became a kind of playful critique of the
art market; the next year he staged a series of events in downtown Manhattan collectively
known as Ray Gun Theater, which influenced the development of performance art during the
next several decades. Among the earliest works in the Whitney exhibition are sculptures
from The Store, including Braselette (1961) and The Black Girdle (1961). This presentation
of material from The Store will be supplemented by loans from the collection of Claes
Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, including several sculptures, original inventory lists of
items for sale, and a study for the poster advertising The Store.
Oldenburg’s early interest in environments shifted to discrete sculptural works. Using
ordinary, everyday items as his subjects, he developed “soft” sculptures using pliable
materials such as canvas and vinyl, which he stuffed with fillers to create malleable, mutable
objects. Several iconic examples will be on view at the Whitney including Giant BLT (Bacon,
Lettuce, and Tomato Sandwich) (1963), French Fries and Ketchup (1963), and Soft
Toilet (1966). These and other early sculptures will be complemented by several dozen of
the Whitney’s works on paper by Oldenburg and by Oldenburg with van Bruggen. The bulk of
the drawings were acquired in 2002 as a gift to the museum from the American
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Contemporary Art Foundation, Inc., Leonard A. Lauder, President, and this will be the first
time that a large number of them will be shown in concert with the Whitney’s sculptural
objects. These works range in date from the early 1960s to the late 1990s and include
collages, prints, pages of quick notebook sketches, and carefully rendered drawings. Several
of these depict proposals for feasible and non-feasible civic monuments and Large-Scale
Projects.
One highlight of the exhibition is Oldenburg’s Ice Bag – Scale C (1971), which has
undergone extensive conservation work in preparation for this exhibition. Oldenburg’s Ice
Bag project was first conceived as part of the Art and Technology program for the U.S.
Pavilion at the 1970 World’s Fair in Osaka, where an eighteen-foot version, powered by
hydraulics, appeared. This version was, in the end, produced in collaboration with Gemini
G.E.L. and Krofft Enterprises. The Whitney’s Ice Bag – Scale C was the third version of the
subject and is the only one built with a 12-foot diameter (scale B has a four-foot diameter).
It too was produced with Gemini G.E.L. and has a motorized system of fans that inflate,
deflate, twist, and turn the kinetic sculpture into various positions.
Happenings formed a central strand of Oldenburg’s early work in the 1960s. What we know
of them has been learned primarily through photographic documentation and published
scripts. Here, for the first time, eight rare films of Oldenburg’s Happenings will be shown
together in the Whitney’s Film & Video Gallery, projected in loops around the walls. Two of
the films – Fotodeath (1961) and Autobodys (1967) - have not been seen since they were
first screened in the 1960s, and have been restored especially for the exhibition.
Each film reveals the structure and form of Oldenburg’s approach. Carefully scripted, the
Happenings were performed variously in Dallas, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and
upstate New York, in old storefronts, a shack, a university hall, or in the open air, using
sets incorporating draped muslin, furniture, mirrors, tables, burlap, costumes, large colored
sculptural forms, and painted words. Accompanied by soundtracks using vinyl records,
drums, the radio, and live sounds, Oldenburg performs with artists and friends including
Patty Mucha, Lucas Samaras, Carolee Schneemann, Henry Geldzahler, Claire and Tom
Wesselmann, and others, as well as volunteers in different cities.
Seen together, these revelatory films make clear the roots of Oldenburg’s interest in
collaboration that were to emerge more fully in his collaborative projects with Coosje van
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Bruggen. A slide projection of their 1985 performance Il Corso del Coltello (The Course of
the Knife), made in the streets and canals of Venice, Italy, completes the group.
The following will be shown:
Fotodeath, 1961, 16mm, b/w, silent, 12 min. Filmed by Al Kouzel.
This Happening is the second part of Circus, which was performed six times in the Reuben Gallery, a
store on East 3rd Street, NYC, in February 1961. (restored for the exhibition)
Ray Gun Theater, 1962, 16mm, b/w, silent. 120 min. Filmed by Raymond Saroff.
Ten Happenings performed at the Store, 107 East 2nd Street, New York City, between February and
May 1962: Store Days I and II, Nekropolis I and II, Injun I and II, Voyages I and II, World’s Fair I and
II.
Injun, 1962, 16mm, b/w, sound, 12 min. Filmed by Roy Fridge.
A daytime dress rehearsal of the Happening, filmed in an abandoned house on the property of the
Dallas Museum of Art.
Autobodys, 1963, 16mm, b/w, silent, 20 min.
A film of the Happening Autobodys, performed in Los Angeles in the fall of 1963.
(restored for the exhibition)
Scarface and Aphrodite, 1963, 16mm, b/w, sound, 13 min. Filmed by Vernon Zimmerman.
Film of the Happening Gayety, at Lexington Hall University of Chicago.
Birth of the Flag I and II (1974, from footage shot in June 1965), 16mm, silent, 38 min. Filmed by
Stan VanDerBeek, Diane Rochlin, and Sheldon Rochlin, produced by Rudy Wurlitzer, edited by Lana
Jokel.
A Happening in two parts, filmed outdoors in upstate New York.
Il Corso del Coltello (The Course of the Knife), 1985
A slide projection of a large scale performance by Oldenburg, van Bruggen, and Frank Gehry in the
streets and canals of Venice, Italy.
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen: The Music Room
A full room has been dedicated to a series of sculptures of musical instruments by
Oldenburg and van Bruggen in a presentation entitled The Music Room. In 1992 Oldenburg
and van Bruggen developed a body of kindred forms derived from harps, saxophones, and
clarinets. A soft saxophone from this series will be included in this presentation. Eight years
later the pair was invited to conceive a work for Encounters: New Art from Old, an
exhibition at the National Gallery in London. The exhibition was composed of works made by
contemporary artists in response to the museum’s collection. Van Bruggen chose to explore
the interiors of the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. More specifically
she was inspired by the paintings A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal and A Young
Woman Seated at a Virginal. The pair created Resonances, after J.V. (2000) in response, a
window box installation of an interior with sculptural elements that will be installed at the
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Whitney. Resonances, after J.V. became the springboard for Oldenburg and van Bruggen,
who expanded the musical theme to create several instruments. Soft Viola (2002), given to
the Whitney in 2002, was prompted by the viola depicted so prominently in one of the
Vermeer compositions. Here it is an instrument deprived of its function, hanging from the
wall in a state of suspended animation. Like many works conceived by Oldenburg and van
Bruggen, the intrinsically sculptural viola, with its voluptuous contours and art historical
associations, is replete with erotic overtones.
The theme and form of musical instruments proved ideal for exploring physical and material
transformations and the resulting shifts in meaning. Metamorphosis occurs here through
scale and the way soft and hard forms can playfully transform our everyday perceptions of
the function or performance of musical instruments. Although these have been concerns of
the artists throughout their careers, the Music Room’s display brings these ideas to the
fore in a particularly focused way. Musical instruments also serve as a particularly apt
metaphor for the process of artistic collaboration and their group presentation creates
reverberations as the sculptural instruments play off of one another.
As installed at the Whitney, The Music Room includes both hard and soft instruments of
differing scales that range in date from 1992 to 2006. Among the objects included in the
installation are variations on a viola, saxophone, clarinets, French horns, sheet music, and a
metronome. A select group of related drawings will hang nearby, including the Whitney’s
Soft Viola Island (2001), in which tiny sailboats circumnavigate the verdant shores of an
island in the shape of a recumbent viola.
About the Artists
Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929, Stockholm) grew up in Chicago and attended Yale University
(1946-50) before settling in New York City in 1956. Influenced by his environs on the
Lower East Side, he created a series of performances and installations such as The Street
(1960) and The Store (1961) that established him as a leading figure of contemporary art.
Moving to Los Angeles and shifting his vision to The Home (1963), Oldenburg began a
series of sewn and fabricated versions of ordinary household objects, including Bedroom
Ensemble. On his return to New York, he began a series of drawings of objects in fantastic
scale called “Proposed Colossal Monuments.” In 1976, a 45-foot-tall sculpture in the form
of a Clothespin was realized in downtown Philadelphia, the first such work in a ‘feasible’
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scale. From 1976 on, he worked in partnership with Coosje van Bruggen, whom he married
in 1977.
Coosje van Bruggen was born in the Netherlands in 1942 and studied ballet as a youth. She
received a master’s degree in art history with a minor in French literature from the
University of Groningen prior to serving as a member of the curatorial staff in the Painting
and Sculpture Department at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam from 1961 until 1971.
Van Bruggen was co-editor of the catalogue of Sonsbeek 71, a multi-sited exhibition of
contemporary sculpture throughout the Netherlands. In 1976, Oldenburg and van Bruggen
worked together for the first time on the reconstruction and relocation of the 41-foot-tall
Trowel I (1971-76)—originally shown at Sonsbeek 71—to the Kröller-Müller Museum
grounds in Otterlo. In 1978 van Bruggen moved to New York where she continued to work
with Oldenburg on creating site-specific, large-scale urban works, while also serving as an
international independent curator and critic. Van Bruggen was a member of the selection
committee for Documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany (1982); a contributor to Artforum (1983–
88); and Senior Critic in the Department of Sculpture at Yale University School of Art in
New Haven (1996–97). In addition to her extensive writings on Oldenburg’s early work and
on the collaborative projects, she created the characters for Il Corso del Coltello (Venice,
1985), a performance by Oldenburg, van Bruggen, and the architect Frank Gehry. Van
Bruggen is the author of essays on Richard Artschwager and Gerhard Richter and books on
John Baldessari, Hanne Darboven, Bruce Nauman, and Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum
Bilbao.
The artistic team of Oldenburg and van Bruggen executed more than 40 permanently sited
sculptures in architectural scale throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan, including
Spoonbridge and Cherry (1988), Minneapolis; Mistos (Match Cover) (1992), Barcelona;
Shuttlecocks (1994), Kansas City; Saw, Sawing (1996), Tokyo; Ago, Filo e Nodo (Needle,
Thread and Knot) (2000), Milan; and the 40-foot-high Dropped Cone (2001) atop the
Neumarkt Galerie in Cologne, Germany. Their collaboration also encompassed smaller park
and garden sculptures in addition to indoor installations. Until van Bruggen’s death on
January 10, 2009, Oldenburg and van Bruggen lived and worked in Manhattan, California,
and France.