During his prolific 60-year career, Claes Oldenburg (1929-2022) has used sculpture, collage, performance, and monumental public artworks to explore the mystery and power of such commonplace objects as a tube of lipstick, a bag of French fries, and a toilet seat. He changed the scale, shape, colour, or texture of these familiar items, creating surprising and often humorous artworks that encourage us to experience our environment differently. These works established Oldenburg as one of the leading practitioners of Pop Art.
In the mid-1970s, Oldenburg began collaborating with his wife, Coosje van Bruggen (1942–2009), on large-scale public projects. Their first commissions included Trowel I (1971–1976), an oversize garden tool that appears to be jammed into the earth in front of the Kroller-Muller Museum in the Netherlands, and Batcolumn (1977), an upright baseball bat of Cor-Ten steel and aluminium installed in front of an office building in downtown Chicago.
Maquette of the Giant Switches was the preparatory idea for a commission that Oldenburg was asked to asked to conceive for CBS. In 1978, he was invited by the Chairman of CBS to propose a sculptural installation for two areas of the lobby of CBS’s celebrated headquarters in Midtown Manhattan designed by Eero Saarinen. Oldenburg proposed a pair of giant light switches to symbolise the communications industry and the charged energy of New York City.
CLAES OLDENBURG AND COOSJE VAN BRUGGEN
aluminium, painted with spray enamel
Acquired in 2024
