Paula Cooper Gallery Mounts Claes Oldenburg's“Six Themes” After 50 Years

(MENAFN- USA Art News) An exhibition titled “Six Themes” by the late artist Claes Oldenburg (1929–2022) is set to open next month at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York. The show will feature significant works representing each of Oldenburg's six core subjects: Geometric Mouse, Three-Way Plug, Fagends, Clothespin, Typewriter Eraser, and Standing Mitt with Ball. This exhibition marks the first time these seminal pieces have been collectively celebrated since their debut in a landmark survey exhibition at the Walker Art Center in 1975.

Oldenburg's“Six Themes” were first explored in depth starting in the 1970s, inspiring numerous artworks for each subject. He scaled up everyday items like the clothespin to monumental sizes, also creating soft prototypes from stuffed, sewn canvas. Oldenburg once stated,“a requirement of any subject is that it be extremely adaptable, especially in scale, so that a small clothespin would be as interesting as a clothespin a hundred feet high.” These works often take on an unintentional abstraction as some original objects, such as the typewriter eraser and movie film projector that inspired the Geometric Mouse, have become obsolete.

The new exhibition includes rarely seen examples from Oldenburg's estate and private collections. It opens on November 5 and will remain on view through December 19. The 1975 survey exhibition traveled to several institutions after its initial run at the Walker Art Center, including the Denver Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

Oldenburg's large-scale installations are iconic, transforming mundane items into monumental sculptures. His famous “Spoonbridge and Cherry” (1988), created with his wife and fellow artist Coosje van Bruggen, is a prominent feature of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The Denver Art Museum entrance displays “Big Sweep” (2006), depicting a broom and dustpan, while the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., houses “Typewriter Eraser, Scale X” (1998–99).

Oldenburg also authored the approximately 700-word statement “I Am For...” which appeared in a 1961 exhibition catalog. He later described it as a“slightly satirical ode or paean to the possibilities of using anything in one's surroundings (mostly urban) as a starting point for art.”

We previously reported:

A new Roy Lichtenstein retrospective at the Whitney Museum argues his prolific copying was a deliberate artistic strategy, anticipating art's modern ubiquity.

Source: This Is Colossal

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