PRESS RELEASE COURTESY GUGGENHEIM BILBAO
With his humorous and profound depictions of everyday objects, Claes Oldenburg is one of the most important and popular artists since the late 1950s. Not only has he been a major figure in performance art, installation art and pop art, but he has also, through his partnership with Coosje van Bruggen, had a profound influence on public art with their monumental large-scale projects. One central point of reference in Oldenburg’s oeuvre is the industrially produced object—the object as commodity, which in continuous metamorphoses of media and form becomes a conveyer of culture and a symbol of the imagination, desires, and obsessions of the capitalist world.
CT EDIT
Claes Oldenburg talks about his beginnings as an artists, the early 60s in NY, at MUMOK Vienna on Feb 4, 2012. (duration 26.37)
Overview of the exhibition. (duration 2:53)