Claes Oldenburg
September 2004
Widely regarded for his imposing, gigantic soft sculptures, Claes Oldenburg's printmaking activities have been less obvious to the general public. Having once described the process of producing a print as 'an excruciating, unpleasant activity, like going to the hospital for an operation' (1), Oldenburg disliked the workshop setting to such an extent that Petersburg press set up a printing press in the artist's new studio in Broome Street, New York, preferring to create his works alone.
Oldenburg began to take printmaking seriously in the late sixties and by 1971 he had produced his first lithographs with Petersburg Press. The artist insisted that from the beginning there should be an interplay between the paper surface and the image. The artist's crayon drawings were transferred wet to zinc plates. The deckled sheets of handmade paper were very heavy and textured, so that a crayon line dragged across the surface would become broken up.
Corrugated cardboard was also used in the printmaking process in order to give a fractured texture to the line. Oldenburg wanted to create the patterns of corrugated cardboard to convey something of the character of the Broome Street Studio. The artist explains that, 'the corrugated look was influenced by what I saw on boxes in the studio' (2).
The baked potato has long been a recurring motif in Oldenburg's work. It first appeared as one of the artist's soft sculptures in the early sixties. By 1964, Oldenburg was developing hard versions of his soft sculptures, made of plaster, and the baked potato made its appearance again in 1966, complete with random spray of green spots imitating chives, as part of the portfolio, Seven Objects in a Box. This was a box comprising of seven multiple objects, published by Tanglewood press, Inc. The other artists in the box included Jim Dine and Andy Warhol. Oldenburg has explained his past use of multiples in his oeuvre, 'the multiple object for me was the sculptor's solution to making a print' (3).
The baked potato invariably made its way into one of Oldenburg's imaginary colossal monuments appearing in drawings dating from the mid-sixties. Oldenburg has sensuously described his love of baked potatoes:
1. Richard H. Axom and David Platzket, Printed Stuff, Prints, Posters and Ephemera by Claes Oldenburg, A Catalogue Raisonne 1958-1996 (new York, 1997), p. 21
2. Op. Cit., p. 27
3. Claes Oldenburg, Multiples in Retrospect 1964-1990 (New York, 1991), p?
4. Barbara Haskell, Claes Oldenburg, Object into Monument (Pasadena, California, 1971-1972), p. 15
Oldenburg began to take printmaking seriously in the late sixties and by 1971 he had produced his first lithographs with Petersburg Press. The artist insisted that from the beginning there should be an interplay between the paper surface and the image. The artist's crayon drawings were transferred wet to zinc plates. The deckled sheets of handmade paper were very heavy and textured, so that a crayon line dragged across the surface would become broken up.
Corrugated cardboard was also used in the printmaking process in order to give a fractured texture to the line. Oldenburg wanted to create the patterns of corrugated cardboard to convey something of the character of the Broome Street Studio. The artist explains that, 'the corrugated look was influenced by what I saw on boxes in the studio' (2).
The baked potato has long been a recurring motif in Oldenburg's work. It first appeared as one of the artist's soft sculptures in the early sixties. By 1964, Oldenburg was developing hard versions of his soft sculptures, made of plaster, and the baked potato made its appearance again in 1966, complete with random spray of green spots imitating chives, as part of the portfolio, Seven Objects in a Box. This was a box comprising of seven multiple objects, published by Tanglewood press, Inc. The other artists in the box included Jim Dine and Andy Warhol. Oldenburg has explained his past use of multiples in his oeuvre, 'the multiple object for me was the sculptor's solution to making a print' (3).
The baked potato invariably made its way into one of Oldenburg's imaginary colossal monuments appearing in drawings dating from the mid-sixties. Oldenburg has sensuously described his love of baked potatoes:
The pleasure of the baked potato, apart from its mass, is in the sitting of the potato - east, west, north, south - compressing its sides and then laying into the slit a geometrical shape of butter and watching it melt (4).
1. Richard H. Axom and David Platzket, Printed Stuff, Prints, Posters and Ephemera by Claes Oldenburg, A Catalogue Raisonne 1958-1996 (new York, 1997), p. 21
2. Op. Cit., p. 27
3. Claes Oldenburg, Multiples in Retrospect 1964-1990 (New York, 1991), p?
4. Barbara Haskell, Claes Oldenburg, Object into Monument (Pasadena, California, 1971-1972), p. 15
Jennifer Ramkalawon