Claes Oldenburg, creator of Pop Art on a giant scale, has died at age 93
Source: NPR
The visual artist Claes Oldenburg, one of the most playful forces in Pop Art, has died at age 93. His death Monday was confirmed to NPR in a statement from Paula Cooper, whose gallery represented him. "It was thrilling to work with Claes, whose odd take on things was delightful, and could completely turn one's mood around," Cooper wrote.
Oldenburg's enduring fascination was to render prosaic objects — a lipstick, for example, or a rubber stamp, or a hamburger, or a cherry perched on the tip of a spoon — in giant scale, and then put that artwork in public spaces. As he told All Things Considered in 2011, " "We like the idea that the sculptures are not all in, say, New York or someplace — that they're scattered around the cities of America and Europe. ... There's a lot of people you're never going to reach. But we have reached, I think, quite a few people, in all parts of the country."
Claes Oldenburg was born Jan. 28, 1929 in Stockholm, Sweden; his father was a diplomat, and the family eventually wound up in Chicago, where the elder Oldenburg served as consul general beginning in 1936. Oldenburg studied literature and art history at Yale and then attended the Art Institute of Chicago in the early 1950s.
In 1956, he moved to New York, and was soon swept up in the emerging conceptual and performance art scenes. His first New York show, at the Judson Gallery in 1959, was formed out of quotidian found materials, including paper and string; two years later, he opened a show called The Store in a downtown storefront, which evoked neighborhood shops and featured plaster pieces that were simulacra of everyday grocery store purchases.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2022/07/18/1112037602/claes-oldenburg-dead
Probably his most famous work is "Lipstick on Caterpillar Tracks" which he made to protest the Vietnam War.
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Philly has four of this sculptures - a wall plug, a broken shirt button, a paint brush, and the much more well-known Clothespin.
Last edited Mon Jul 18, 2022, 09:20 PM - Edit history (1)
It is right by steps that go down into a concourse that goes to Suburban Station for the commuter trains.
The "Paintbrush" was recently installed a few years ago on the Avenue of the Arts in front of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts there.
The "Wall Plug" (from 1970) appears to have been in a private collection and was gifted to the Phila. Museum of Art in 2010 which is where it appears to be installed outside there somewhere.
And the "Split Button" is installed on Penn's campus -
Edit to add - here is a local article that came out today - https://whyy.org/articles/claes-oldenburg-sculptures-philadelphia/
But we do have the Batcolumn!
We sure as hell needed some whimsical art to pass by all these years.
I know the last piece he installed here in Philly was the "Paint Brush" also called "Paint Torch" (that includes a little blob of "paint" on the sidewalk nearby). There was quite a bit of coverage showing it being installed!
Well at least I now know where the other 2 items are.
Thank you Mr. Oldenburg for your conversation-piece art!!!
There are a couple of these installed around (Seattle, Las Vegas, D.C.) -
I love this!!! 
I.e., when there were nothing but huge holes in the ground with construction fencing around them. I still have the commemorative coin when they opened them (all before the "Clothes Pin" ). It looks like this -
Years later, the "Meridian" tower that was part of that ended up with a fire on the top floors and they eventually tore that down floor by floor since it was squeezed between existing older buildings.
I was commuting to middle/junior high school downtown at the time in the early '70s and rode the train, got off at Suburban Station, walked along the underground concourse to that entrance/exit (used to be a skating rink there), and then caught the 2 bus the rest of the way to school!
(from here)
In fact I remember going to overnight Girl Scout Camp in 1971 and took the train from Reading Terminal (when the trains were above ground) and got off at Pottstown, and then the camp would meet the girls there with a van to go the rest of the way to the camp, which was near Gilbertsville.
I rode a Penn Central line train (as it was transitioning to SEPTA) downtown to school every day from 1971 - 1975 and watched the transformation happening. It was a shock when I first started working downtown commuting there by train a decade later after they had completed what my mom called "the big hole in the ground" (connecting the old Penn Central and Reading lines). I did what was unimaginable in the past - "stayed on the train PAST Suburban Station" (which used to be the end of the line) and then eventually got off at Market East Station at 11th St., now stupidly renamed "Jefferson Station". 
(I didn't know he was still w us)
I think I saw the Clothespin in Philly.
I didn't hear of the Paintbrush. I definitely didn't know about about Broken Button. Not sure about the Plug - that one's really funny to me. 😄
There's one I think poking at my mind...
Oh, yeah -- The old fashion Ice Pack with the wide
screw top. 👍
Looked up a bunch more.
