“It’s art because I say it is!”
Art Camp Summer Session is in the books. As usual, we had so much fun creating art, playing games, eating and those 5:00 cocktails where, yes, we did solve some world problems. And the weather has been perfect, 70s, a slight breeze, skies of blue. Yum.
Let the July post marathon continue. At least I’ll do my best.
You may have seen in the news the passing of Claes Oldenburg, a Swedish-born artist who captured light-hearted renderings of everyday things in large sculptures in urban settings. I have been lucky enough to view two in person and hope to add some more to my collection. You may have guessed I love public art, and celebrate lots of it in my Daily Amazing series here.
“Oldenburg was an artist of a more obviously pleasing and old-fashioned kind: a wizard of a draughtsman, with a freehand, quick-scribbling touch that delighted with its liquidity even as its subjects were Park Avenue skyscrapers and American expressways. That play, between the soft and the hard, the large and the small, rose above the more familiar Pop tension between art and nonart. It was his signature, and gave his art its wit, mischief, and grace.
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I took this photo in Washington, D.C., at a special sculpture showing. (I am WILD about this stuff.) It has since traveled to the Sculpture Park in Seattle. Do you think Gen Z would know what this is?
And took this one at the sculpture park in Minneapolis. I have had this particular one on my bucket list for a long time to see in person. Check out the blue rooster too. Not Oldenburg’s but delightful.
Here are a few more I’d love to see in person. Philadelphia and Kansas City host three of them.
These four photos and heading photo are from online sources.
Lots more in articles about him. Love the sense of humor and urban feeling about them. Public art rocks!
Bloomberg article. The Artists Who Mastered the Urban Spectacle.
New Yorker article. The Giant Art of Claes Oldenburg.